


Selfish (All To Myself)

by Daisy_PoisonPen



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Fluff too, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, I'm not sorry, M/M, Past Stony, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Romance, Still not sorry, and lots of angst, kinda Civil-War compliant, kinda Homecoming compliant, pepper and tony are fwbs, probably not canon compliant, there might be crack in this, very canon non-compliant, will add characters as they appear, will add tags as they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2020-07-28 01:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20055745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daisy_PoisonPen/pseuds/Daisy_PoisonPen
Summary: "I want you all to myself because I'm selfish." - PnB RockWhen May and Ben Parker are killed in a robbery, Peter Parker goes to live with his aunt. That's where he meets his first mentor, famous neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange.Dr. Strange isn't around when Peter gets bitten by a genetically enhanced spider, but a certain billionaire and Peter's idol helps him navigate the ins and outs of being a hero, taking him under his wing.When the two mentors meet, sparks fly over what they mean to Peter... and to each other.or:the one where Peter loves his two dads and is a v good matchmaker and the two dads fight over who is a better dad





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my first multi-chap foray into marvel comics and ironstrange? have fun?  
special thanks to [FlyingFreeYT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingFreeYT/pseuds/FlyingFreeYT) for the beta read <3 ilysm for the help.
> 
> I'm so excited about this you guys, so please, please, let me know what you think each chapter. I'll try not to put in too many notes but I'll be sure to make sure that I write one for any possible triggers coming up. Still, this story is rated E for Enjoy responsibly. 
> 
> all aboard the pain train!  
~Daisy

**CHAPTER 1**

May Reilly was four when Christine was born. Their mother raised them mostly on her own, due to whatever issues drove her and their father apart. He came around on Christmas, Easter, and birthdays—but when May broke her wrist on her bicycle when she was 7, he didn’t come. When Christine sang her first recital and did her first science fair—a project where she built her own free energy machine that won her first place—he didn’t come. They got used to him not being around.

Eventually, Mom stopped using her married name and went back to Palmer. When the girls were old enough, they did, too.

They both loved science and medicine. May Reilly was always the outgoing one. In high school, she was a cheerleader, on the yearbook team, on the Student Council. Christine was a science nerd. She didn’t really do anything except read anything she could get her hands on. She took more AP classes, had good grades, and took college courses in the community college in conjunction with her high school classes—always working, never interested in extra-curriculars.

By the time she graduated from high school, Christine had passed all the requirements needed to take the MCAT. She wanted a college experience instead of attempting med school right away, so she applied to one of those programs where they could take you through a bachelor’s and med school in only seven years, and she got in at her preferred school. She was never on anyone’s radar and sort of disappeared without a trace.

May Reilly was different. She went to nursing school, stayed in their neighborhood in Queens, married her boyfriend from all throughout high school. She kept contact with her friends from high school, joined a sorority in college. May Reilly always seemed to be having the time of her life. When May Reilly <strike> Jameson </strike> Palmer became May Parker, she was still having the time of her life.

It was why Christine was so surprised to hear May’s sheer panic on the phone that morning. “Teeny, help me please,” she whispered, tears in her voice. “Ben’s beside himself in panic, I don’t know what to do. I—”

“Slow, down, slow down. What’s happening?!”

“They were supposed to call when they landed—they didn’t call and they didn’t land, and nobody knows where they are.”

“Who, Ry?!”

“Rich and Mary, Teeny. Ben’s brother.”

Christine felt her body go tense. “They didn’t land?” she asked faintly.

“N-no, we—the airport said it was delayed, but it’s been hours and… Ben is so scared, Teeny, what do I do? What do we tell Peter?”

_ Oh, Christ. _ The kid was in May Reilly’s house all the time—she loved him deeply and he loved tinkering in the garage with his uncle. The boy was brilliant and kind, full of love for life—if she didn’t know any better, she would have thought that was May’s kid, not Richard Parker’s—the guy had the charisma of a wet rag. Mary was lively though. She and May got along very well. The three of them went out sometimes for a drink or a late dinner when they weren’t all working.

When Mary got pregnant, May had cried with joy. Richard and Mary had been trying for a while, apparently. When he was born, Christine and May both showered her with baby things—a baby blue knitted blanket with royal blue trim; a tiny suit for his baptism (Richard and Ben weren’t very religious, but Mary was); a bed set for his new crib, which they also bought; a hand-made mobile; a rocking chair; dozens of nursing cushions and diaper boxes; and every kind of bottle on planet earth.

Peter Parker had always been deeply loved. May and Ben never really tried for kids either, so Christine was sure that May Reilly’d just repossessed Rich and Mary’s as her own. With tears in her eyes, she realized that if that plane never came home, that would be the truth.

The plane never come home. 

The funeral was huge and beautiful. Benjamin Parker held on to Peter like a lifeline and Peter… well, the 4-year-old just looked lost and devastated. At the burial, the boy laid a hand on each empty casket, tears in his eyes. “You promised you’d come home,” he whispered. Behind him, Ben Parker _ broke. _

It took them a long time to recover. Peter withdrew into himself for a while, choosing not to play in the garage with his uncle or outside with his friends. The spark was gone from his eyes, making them dull. He started to get picked on in school, and he came home early over many fights. Christine begged someone from psych for a recommendation, and thankfully, family therapy gave Peter’s steps back their bounce, brought the life back into his eyes. His pain still made her heart ache, but at least the kid was excited about life again. 

He became a near-constant chatter box. He started asking if Aunty Christine could show him hospital things in middle school. Happy about his interest in medicine, she let him shadow a couple of shifts. Strangely, all of his interest seems to be in medical equipment and what all the long names of types of medicines are. He helped her read up on treatments and had surprisingly stunning insights. 

She suggested to May that he was probably too smart for all the losers that bullied him in middle school anyway, and that maybe they should consider getting him an application for that science school in Midtown for high school. He’d be able to figure out his interests with more ease there and, given his interest in chemistry and medical equipment, he’d need all the help he could get to strive in those fields.

* * *

It was actually Dr. Strange that found him chattering while reading on her computer about some new cutting-edge technology for people with paralysis one day. “…although I don’t know if that means there’s something out there for hemiplegics—that would be harder, I think.”

“Hemiplegia is far more common than paraplegia,” Dr. Strange had said, curious to test the kid’s knowledge.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it easier to treat, although if this new neuroskeletal thing that Stark Industries is working on takes off, I’m sure they could modify a version that—”

“Ah. A Stark Industries fan, then?”

“Very much so, sir,” the boy answered. He was so excited, he was bouncing in the office chair. “I got to go to the expo once, and it was _ so _cool. Well, but then all these robots blew it up and we had to run away, but I got to meet Iron Man.”

“Hm. Did you now?” Dr. Strange might have found Stark to be extremely irritating, but he was amused by this boy’s enthusiasm.

The boy looked like he was going to explode with the excitement of the idea in his head. “Ohmigod imagine if Iron Man’s tech were actually what Stark Industries is using? It has all kinds of things we’ve never even seen before! And Iron Man gets hit _ a lot, _I mean, I know his suit isn’t even real iron, it’s some kind of alloy— my guess is but it’s light enough that he can use it walking, and it’s strong enough to hold him up, and it has the ability to brace his back, hips, legs—a structure like that could literally make paraplegics walk. OH MY GOD.”

“How old are you, kid?”

“I’m 13. I’m going to high school next year. My aunt said she wants to see if I can go to Midtown, which would be so awesome—they get to see real labs every year! I heard next year they’re getting a private tour of Oscorp.”

Dr. Strange peered at the computer for a moment. “You understand this stuff?”

“Sure. It’s not that hard.”

Hmm. “Are you squeamish?”

“Not really.”

“Would you like to observe a surgery some time?”

Peter looked like he was going to die of elation. “Can I really?”

“Sure, kid. You’d have to stay behind the glass, but you’ll be able to see everything happening on the table and on the monitors.”

“That would be SO COOL!”

“You’ll have to me know if you get in to Midtown.”

The boy deflated. “I still need references, and I don’t really know a lot of adults that like science as much as I do.”

“I’ll write you a reference.”

Peter looked like he was going to cry. “W-what?”

“Bring a notebook. Write down your observations of the surgery. I’ll look at it and write you a recommendation.”

“You would do that?”

Dr. Strange nodded because the kid didn’t express any insecurity about not being able to keep up, just surprise that someone was willing to help.

When he read Peter’s report, the observations were so detailed that he decided to put in a call for a decent donation to Midtown in exchange for Peter’s attendance.

* * *

Peter took to sitting in his office. Not Christine’s. His.

At first, the doctor found this to be irksome, a disturbance. But the boy was quiet and diligent when he was working, only occasionally moving to stretch his legs or ask a question. He always finished his work quickly. Even though he was bored with it, or so he complained, he never shirked his homework. Stephen was glad the kid wasn’t a complete moron _ and _lazy.

The truth was, the kid had intelligence to match his tenacity. Somehow, he was also pretty sure that the kid knew everyone liked him, because he was pretty bold with his friendliness and regularly barreled past Stephen’s numerous boundaries. Stephen was always equally surprised and irritated when he found that he didn’t mind the kid in his business.

The kid clung to his every word. He had to admit, it fed his ego a little. He showed off a little bit more when the kid was around—not to say he took any unnecessary risks with his patients, but he loved the stars in Peter’s eyes when he told him about this or that procedure or some new technique he had to perform for the first time. Peter was staying current on most neurosurgical literature, and while some of it left him a little bit lost, he kept up with everything Stephen said and asked intelligent questions.

Stephen _ loved _talking to Peter. In fact, he was growing fond of the kid. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone ever, but he considered the boy his friend, a rare kind that trusted him and only rolled his eyes at his displays of over-confidence without judgement and listens through them, pointing out the underlying insecurity with kindness and understanding.

The kid wasn’t just smart, he was wise. Stephen thought that was a result of so much loss. 

He was a gem, a rare and precious diamond, that kid. It was his genuine pleasure to write the recommendation letter and call the school board to offer a donation so Peter could get in. He told Christine what he did, and she and May sent him a bottle of scotch in thanks.

He wasn’t surprised when Peter burst into his office looking like a firecracker about to explode. “IGOTINICAN’TBELIEVETHISISHAPPENING” he screeched.

“Whoa, turn it down,” Stephen muttered, recovering from the shock of fear that had caused him to jerk in his seat.

Peter continued like he hadn’t even heard him. “This is going to be the best birthday ever! I’m going Midtown, Dr. Strange! And my best friend is going too! I get to start in a new high school for people like me, and Ned and I won’t be looked at weird for being nerds. I mean, I know I’m a nerd, Dr. Strange, but it is going to be so awesome to go somewhere were being a nerd is normal. I hope we can make other new friends, too! This is going to be awesome. Aunt May and Uncle Ben said we can celebrate on May’s next shift off. Unlimited ice cream, here I come! But Ned can’t come, he’s busy. Oh, did you know that Midtown has the biggest high-school level robotics laboratory in the state? Oh my God, this is going to be awesome. They gave me a whole list of things I can join—I’m looking at robotics and also the scholastic decathlon because that would be cool, but I would have to study a bunch extra. Hopefully, it won’t take up too much more of my time because I also want to try—”

“Whoa, slow down!” Stephen stood up and rounded his desk, pulling the kid into an embrace, which he returned excitedly. “Congratulations, Peter. I can’t wait to see you succeed.”

Peter’s face lit up even more, if that was even possible. “I couldn’t have done it without you! The principal told me that your recommendation letter was practically irradiated it was so glowing.”

“You earned it.”

“Thank you!”

Stephen smiled. “Luckily, I’m done with my most pressing work. I’m on call tonight, but I can definitely take you out for a little celebration. What do you say?”

Peter was vibrating again. “S-seriously? That would be so awesome! Can we get ice cream? Can Christine come?”

Stephen rolled his eyes. “Christine’s boring. Come on. Guys night out, what do you say?”

“Pizza and ice cream?” Peter pleaded. “Oh! Can we go driving in that new car you got? Christine says it’s ostentatious just like you, but I want to know how fast it can go. Please, please?”

“Okay but no ice cream in the car.”

“YES!”

Sometimes, he forgot that Peter was only 13 until moments like this reminded him. He logged off from his patient portal and then made sure to clear his desk. “Lead the way, kid.”

Peter practically bounced away to tell Christine that he was leaving, and Stephen smiled after him. For some reason, it felt like that kid was exactly what he was missing in his life. He was glad he met him.

  



	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A celebration goes horribly wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special thanks to FlyingFreeYT for the beta read <3 be sure to check out their page and drop kudos on their stories!

Peter was alternating between skipping ahead and walking backwards so that he could address May and Ben, who were chit-chatting with each other and amusedly listening as Peter’s excitement spilled out of him like a flooded, broken dam. 

Ben pulled him under his arm, and Peter hugged him back happily . “I’m so proud of you, kid.”

“Thanks, Uncle Ben,” Peter whispered, holding him tightly. Uncle Ben always smelled like leather and motor oil and sawdust.

They arrived at their favorite place to get pizza. It was the best pizza place in Queens, Peter was sure. The walls deep gray with alternating black, white, and red tiles, and the floor gleamed with polished wood. The tables and chairs were set under their own lights, which looked like upside-down martini glasses and alternated in color between red and green, and the booths had little rows of lights hanging over them, all looking like tiny white wine-glasses. Peter inhaled like it was his last breath on earth, the smell of spices, fresh-baked bread, and tomato sauce filling his nose. He ran straight to their booth in the corner, which they always sat in, and inhaled again. “Can we have cheese-bread? May?” He turned around. “Can we have cheese-bread?”

May nodded, laughing at his enthusiasm.

“So, Petey,” Ben said as Peter turned back around, “have you got any plans for the semester? You said you were really trying to join the academic decathlon team.”

“Oh, yes!” Peter yelped, excited. May had gone straight to the counter to order the pizza and was standing at the counter, talking to Valentina, the lady that owned the pizza place, laughing as her hands waived around. He watched her for a moment and then his eyes went back to Ben. “Robotics is only two days a week, and I want to do more. Decathlon will give me better study skills and it’ll be more challenging than what I do now.”

“Well, anything else beside being a bona fide nerd?”

“Well, I have to round out the holy trinity of nerdiness—”

“That being?”

“Oh, well, Star Wars and sci-fi movies, crushing all my classes all day, every day—”

“Crushing them, huh? Cocky boy.”

“Not cocky, Ben,” May interjected, standing by the booth for a moment. “Confident.”

“That’s right, confident,” Peter laughed. “It’s not cocky if you can back it up.”

“What toppings do you want?”

“Smart kid with a smart mouth. I want Pepperoni, May. Thanks, baby.”

“Can we have meat lover’s?”

“What was the third thing?” Ben asked with a chuckle as May finished placing their order.

“Joining band again, obviously.”

Ben doubled over, cackling.

May sat down next to Peter and laughed. “You want to be a band nerd too?”

“Look, I’ve been in band ever since 5 th grade. I wear my band nerd badge with honor and sacrifice,” Peter answered dramatically.

“You sure you can take all that on and keep up, kid?”

“Sure! I can do it. I know I can. I just have to plan my time. I love music, it’s a change of pace from everything else.”

“You do that, kid. You’re a powerhouse.”

“You know it! Besides, did you know that knowing how to read music is actually good for your brain? Music in general helps the brain a lot, especially with math. But reading music is good for all kinds of things. If I’m going to keep being the best, I have to do everything I can to stay ahead.”

“Just don’t bite off more than you can chew, okay?” Ben’s face grew serious, and he met Peter’s eyes evenly. “You know, Peter, you could do anything you put your mind to, and do it well. It’s your job to choose what that will be and choose wisely.”

Peter nodded, absorbing the advice intensely. “I won’t let you down, Uncle Ben.”

“It’s not me, Petey. It’s you. Don’t let yourself down. You have the ability, Petey, to take your own future and shape it. But that also means that you answer to yourself about what that means.”

Peter picked his fingernails, suddenly anxious. What would his future even look like? Sure, he was smart, but was that all? He wanted more than anything to just… be more—be more and do more.

“Remember, Petey,” Ben was saying when Peter tuned him back in, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Peter looked at him and smiled. “Thanks, Ben.”

“You’ve got it, kiddo.”

“I love you,” Peter said.

“You’re the best thing in my life, Petey,” Ben answered.

“Pizza’s ready,” May said, breaking the moment. They got ready to eat, and the conversation switched to lighter topics. Peter didn’t know how much he would treasure those moments of laughter and good food with his family, and he definitely didn’t know that those would be the last of such moments.

He just enjoyed them.

* * *

The convenience store is on the way back home from the pizza shop if they walk past the subway, which is the long way around. Ben was telling a story that had Peter and May cackling when May’s cell phone rang. She answered it laughing still. “Hey, Teeny! Oh, we’re celebrating with Peter today, remember? Oh. Yeah, of course. You’ll be around for his birthday, right? Hey, bring the cute doctor, Pete likes him and so do you, still, whether you want to admit it or not.” She gave a short burst of laughter. “Yeah, yeah. Love you, Teeny. Bye.”

“Is Aunty Christine coming over for my birthday?”

“She sure is,” May said with a smile. “She says she’s going to convince Dr. Strange to come, too.”

“I invited him already. He has a surgery scheduled that day but he said he’ll take me out to dinner this weekend. He says he even got me a gift! It is truly awesome to have  _ Dr. Strange  _ give you a birthday present.”

“You really like spending time with him, don’t you?”

“He’s awesome, May. He’s really good at explaining things to me. It’s so cool to get to know him! I think we’re friends. He likes me!”

“That’s good.”

“May? Can we get popcorn too?”

“Oh, popcorn too?”

“Come on, May! You make the best popcorn! Please? Come on, Aunt May, please?” Peter cajoled, bouncing in front of her like an excited little kid.

“Okay, but we’re going to have to divide and conquer,” May said with a grin. “Peter, you pick ice cream and toppings. I’ll go find popcorn and snacks.”

Ben pointed at his chest with his thumb. “What about me? What am I, chopped liver?”

“You pay for all of it,” May answered cheerfully, and Peter burst into laughter as Ben’s jaw dropped.

“Uncle Ben, can you help me pick toppings?”

“Sure can, kiddo.”

They spent the rest of the way to the store ribbing each other and giggling, and when they walked into the store, they were still laughing at each other. Ben and Peter went straight to the candy aisle. Rolling her eyes, May scooted around them to get at the snacks. The only popcorn available was the microwave kind, and she huffed. She’d have to go to the grocery store instead.

Ben was busy tossing M&Ms and gummy candies into his and Peter’s basket, happily picking up anything Peter pointed at, the spoiled kid. They picked up oreos to make crumbles, Gummy bears and worms, Nerds, and Pocky sticks. May came around to their aisle again and whistled. “Wow, are we having ice cream with toppings or toppings with ice cream?”

“Both!” Peter and Ben said simultaneously, then they glanced at each other and broke into laughter.

Peter saw them first. He heard the bell above the door jingle and took May’s hand, pulling her toward the back. “Let’s get our ice cream and go,” he muttered as two men with black hoodies entered the store. Ben nodded and pushed Peter in front of him, guiding him toward the back of the store where the freezers were.

May also chose two 2-liters of soda and was following behind when she heard the ominous click.

Things happened too fast after that. Peter always thought that in moments like this, everything would slow down, and he’d thereafter relive every second of this sort of trauma in slow motion, but that wasn’t the case. Peter only heard someone yell, “CASH!” and then his ears rung as the man fired a warning shot that was so loud he might have been blind.

After that, he only felt Ben’s hands shove him to the floor, which was cold, but his body was warm, and he only saw how the black work boots came toward him and how May turned around and threw herself on them as the barrel of the gun threatened to swallow him up in eternal darkness. Then, there were more gunshots—three of them, and his nails bit into his palms in terror.

After that, the boots ran away, and he managed to shove himself out of the pile, crying in panic. “Help! Please—please help me please—” but there wasn’t anyone at the register anymore. He shoved himself over the counter and smashed the panic button repeatedly, sobbing. The person at the counter had been shot in the face. It wasn’t a single, neat hole with blood like it was in the movies. It was worse—his eye was gone as was part of nose and forehead. His mouth was still gaped open.

His heart pounded in his chest as he realized that he hadn’t heard May or Ben call for him yet. His vision swam and ears were still ringing, but he still stumbled toward the back of the store, where May and Ben were still laying on the ground in a heap, surrounded by a pool of deep, almost-black red.

“No,” he wheezed. “No, no— _ please… _ ” he knelt beside them frantically. “Please, please—Aunt May?

He couldn’t help himself, he screamed.

* * *

Christine knew about what happened to GSWs with lung punctures. Their lungs deflated, releasing air into the cavity around them and the heart—tension pneumothorax. Sometimes they’d start to fill up with blood instead, making it harder to oxygenate the body because major arteries and veins travel through the lungs and lead to the heart, which is how oxygen is carried everywhere.

Left untreated, the latter patients die.

GSWs in the leg were different. 

Ben Parker had a gunshot wound in his right leg. It tore his femoral artery in half. Christine was horrified to find out that Peter reached in and pinched it with his fingers until the medics arrived—he was panicking and couldn’t tie a tourniquet fast enough—not that it mattered. Severing a femoral artery is about as lethal as severing the carotid.

Ben Parker didn’t live.

May Reilly didn’t live either. She died from a gunshot wound to the back as a result of covering her husband and nephew’s bodies with her own during the robbery. The bullet punctured her lung and completely severed her pulmonary artery. She drowned in her own blood.

Christine was watching him, now, his eyes vacant and his hands, knees, and shirt soaked in blood, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. He asked her, “are they gone?” and she didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t have to.

He didn’t break into sobs. Instead, it seemed like his entire body went slack, as if his horror and grief were drugs that made him too high to hold his weight up. “What’s going to happen to me now?” he whispered plaintively.

Christine knew what she had to do… she had to protect her sister’s legacy, her most treasured possession.  _ Her son. _ “You’re going to stay with me,” she told him firmly. “You won’t be alone. Okay?”

He didn’t react except for tears splashing from his eyes.

“Can we get you out of these clothes?” she whispered.

He shook his head, his trembling making his teeth chatter. “I-I don’t want…”

“It’s okay. I just want to get you cleaned up,” she said gently. Blood had sprayed over his face and was making his shirt stick to his back. He looked truly gruesome, like someone in a horror scene. “Come on, Pete. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

He shrugged.

May and Ben’s funeral was alot like Richard and Mary’s. Sprays of flowers lay atop simple caskets, and large photos of them as well as a grayscale canvass of their wedding day were displayed.

The obituary made Christine shake all over.

_ May Reilly Parker and Benjamin Parker were married November 4, 1990 and are survived by May’s sister, Christine Palmer, 32, and their son, Peter Parker, 14. _

Neither Christine nor Peter felt like they were surviving anything.

Peter was numb. He delivered his eulogies with stunning calm, thanking the couple for caring for him and giving him happiness while they could. Tears had splashed down from his eyes, but his voice was flat, monotone and empty. In the burial, he knelt by their side until long after everyone was gone, blankly staring in silence.

Dr. Strange came to see him on his birthday. It was late at night, and they sat together on the balcony and stared at the moon and the city lights in silence until Peter wrapped his arms around his knees and sobbed. Stephen knelt in front of him and pulled him into the tightest embrace he could manage. He left after the sun rose, tucking Peter’s exhausted, cried-out form into the bed in the guest room.

Coping was hard. Seeing Peter mourn was even worse. Still, Christine tried to stay strong. She tried to cry only when she was alone. It was harder because she didn’t have work to distract her—they gave her three months off as a result of the bereavement and taking in Peter. He had politely decided against adoption. May and Ben adopted him when his parents died, and they died too.

She realized with horror that he was afraid he was meant to be without real parents, and she didn’t bring it up again. She set him up with psych and she brought him around Strange, who seemed to be soothing balm for the boy’s grief. Those things seemed to help, but it was harder for him to get back to how he used to be. She didn’t blame him… losing two sets of parents in ten years was a horrific nightmare. She also realized that he thought this was temporary, that he would stay until his 18 th birthday and promptly find himself on his own. He didn’t see her as permanent, just someone taken in a twice-orphaned boy because she loved his mind, not because she loved him. One day, as he was heading out to school, she pulled him back by his arm and hugged him tight. He warmed up to her a little bit after that.


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Christine are adjusting to each other and to life without May; Peter starts school and meets old friends and new, for better or worse. Stephen decides that Peter and Christine need a break and decides to take Peter on a weekend road trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyy so first, as usual, special thanks to my new friend FlyingFreeYT for the pre-read and suggestions. Be sure to check out their stories [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingFreeYT/pseuds/FlyingFreeYT) .
> 
> second, guess I should go ahead and put an angst alert here--proceed with caution if you're sensitive to issues surrounding panic attacks, post traumatic stress, anxiety, etc. because our boy is traumatized af and he's got triggers and they are lighting up like new years in times square today. if you decide you don't want to read that but would like a summary, i'll be happy to respond to you here in the comments or on discord or twitter, where you can find me as daisypwrites.
> 
> Roll clip!

**CHAPTER 3**

Ned was shorter than him, with straight black hair that is long enough to fall near his ears and a plump frame that made him impossible to lose in a crowd. Ned was his brother that he never had—and the best of brothers in everything- except for blood. He had a specific tone of voice that he used when he got excited—it went up a lot and he talked _ way _too fast. Sometimes it was endearing, but if Peter was honest, sometimes it was a lot, even for him.

Still, the boy hadn’t left him alone. He texted daily since he found out about the robbery, insisting on phone calls and making sure Peter knew every moment that he was treasured, but still giving him space. Peter couldn’t ask for a better person to have his back when he was suffering.

He felt his eyes burn a little bit when Ned spotted him in the school entrance and immediately ran toward him, crashing into him and enveloping him in a crushing embrace. “Peter,” he breathed. “I’m so happy you’re here.” Then Ned let him go and didn’t say anything else by way of condolences. Instead, he focused their attention onto the study packets for the Decathlon tryouts. “I got you one too. I really hope we both get in,” he said, and he was starting to sound too excited again, which made Peter relax a little bit. “…so we should definitely study together so that we can get a feel for how the quizzing and timing works,” Ned was chattering when Peter tuned him back in. “Hey we have the same class this block! You didn’t get to tour the school so I’ll show you around.”

“Thanks, Ned,” Peter said, trying to inject cheer into his voice. He was excited about this school year—his freshman year in high school!—he really was. It was just that most of his normal emotions had been completely drowned and broken by grief, and he was trying to figure out how to feel those other things again. It would probably take a lot more time than he had to get ready for this school year. 

Ned patted his back. “Hang in, Peter. I won’t leave you alone, I swear it. Hey, look! This is Jordan, we met during the orientation and stuff. Jordan, this is my friend, Peter.”

Peter introduced himself and smiled and joined the chatter, nodding and smiling appropriately. Next, Ned introduced him to Abe and MJ, who genuinely cracked him up. MJ seemed to be sizing him up the entire time they talked, regularly giving him suspicious looks and asking him questions that ended with his full name, as if to confirm that that was his actual name: “Where are you from, Peter Parker?” “What _ are _you, Peter Parker?”

“W-what? What am I? I don’t know, a human? What kind of question is that?”

“Hmm,” was all she said before she turned and walked away, leaving him staring after her in confusion. It wasn’t the first time a girl had confused him, but he didn’t know what to make of MJ.

His first block was advanced physics, and he enjoyed the class far more than the math classes he had in middle school. He had to keep up, of course, so he did extra studying on his own and took extremely careful notes. The next block was English, which was horrifically boring and he found himself drifting to places he didn’t really want to be thinking about. After that was lunch, and he met more people—including Flash.

“Who are you?”

MJ looked him up and down and then rolled her eyes. “Who are you?”

“Wasn’t talking to you, weirdo.”

“Hey,” Peter said, standing up and glaring. “Don’t talk to my friends like that.”

“Or what?” Flash smirked. The boy looked him up and down and smirked. “What are you gonna do?”

“Fuck off,” MJ said, bored. She didn’t even look up from her book. “I don’t know what Peter Parker here would do, but I know what I would do and you won’t like it.”

“Like you could beat me in a fight.”

“Bold of you to assume I’d have to fight you to make you regret coming to this table,” MJ repeated. At that point, Ned, Jordan, Abe, and a nice red-haired girl named Sonya that Peter met in Spanish were all laughing too hard to breathe, so Peter sat down and joined them.

“I told you not to talk to my friends like that,” he said, and then he turned back to his lunch.

“Fuck you, Penis Parker.”

“Honestly, come up with something original.”

"I'm pretty sure that's not how penises work." MJ waved her hand without looking up again, as if to dismiss him.

Enraged, Flash took the milk off Peter’s tray and smashed it over his head. “Look at that,” he chuckled as Peter gaped at him. “A Penis with milk dripping all over.”

“You’re disgusting,” said Sonya.

MJ’s non-reaction sort of spooked Flash, and he decided to end the awkward confrontation before the teachers came to investigate. When he was gone, Peter muttered, “who was that?”

“It was Flash Thompson,” Sonya answered immediately, offering him some napkins from the dispenser near her. “I heard his dad is super rich and Flash is some sort of genius.”

“Was he, now?” MJ snorted. “His remaining neurons will beg for sweet, sweet oblivion soon enough.”

Everyone stared at MJ, but she calmly turned the page, ignoring them.

* * *

They didn’t really talk.

They ate breakfast together in silence. Christine always pet his hair like she wanted to tell him she was sorry for something, and he leaned into the affection every time, needy. Before her shifts, she’d ask, “will you be okay here?” and he would say, “I’m fine, Christine.”

Today, she didn’t ask. She just whispered, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Peter. Get some sleep.”

He didn’t answer.

By the time Christine got to work, she had the worst headache on earth, which she didn’t have time to treat because the trauma unit had a multi-car pile-up coming in, and they needed her help.

Her shift went by in a daze. She was only back at work for a week, and she already felt like she was drowning in patients and work. Thankfully the head nurse, Lily, knew her well enough to know when she needed a break.

“How is he?”

“He’s doing well in school, so there’s that at least,” Christine sighed, leaning on the desk in the nurses’ station and rubbing her temples. “He’s made new friends, he’s fitting in well. But… I can tell he’s depressed. I… the social worker wanted to get him into therapy, so I set him up again, but—it doesn’t seem like he’s made a lot of progress.”

“Well it takes time, honey,” Lily said, rubbing her back.

“He rarely speaks during the day, but he wakes up at all hours screaming.”

“Poor thing.”

Christine sighed, holding her face in her hands. “I don’t know how to help him. I’m trying to give him space but—I don’t want him to feel alone. I… I miss May too, you know? She…”

“Shh,” Lily soothed. “Shh, I’m sorry.”

Dr. Strange wandered by, and Lily straightened, probably hoping for a bit of attention from the man. Instead, he went straight to Christine when he saw her, drawing her into the elevator, where he pressed the 6th floor button and pulled her against him. “What’s wrong?” he asked kindly.

“I’m just… stressed about Peter,” she sniffs. “And—there was a patient today, it was—he was just like Pete.”

“You know better than that Christine. You can’t project your problems or your loved ones onto your patients, that’s a great way to _ kill _them.”

“Honestly, Stephen, not now,” she sighed.

He pulled her into his office. “Yes,” he said sternly, “now. Look, I’ll go see Peter later, okay? I’ll hang out with him and give you a break. But you _ need _to focus up. Okay? If you don’t, your patients will suffer and die and I know you don’t want that.”

“This isn’t about them! I—goddammit, Stephen, not everyone is like you! We can’t all just turn off our emotions and turn on our ridiculously large egos at will, okay?”

Stephen arched an eyebrow. “Wow.”

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“No, it’s alright. My ridiculously large ego can handle it.”

“Shut up.”

“Want me to go see him?”

Christine shrugged. “Maybe he’ll talk to you,” she whispered. “He doesn’t really talk to anyone else, not even his friends or his therapist.”

“I understand. You know, he’ll talk to you when he’s ready.”

“He won’t. He doesn’t want to be with me.” Tears welled in her eyes again.

“That’s not true,” Stephen frowned.

“It is, and I don’t blame him. I’d give anything for him to be with May and Ben, because then that means they’d be alive and he’d be _ home. _ Where he feels safe and where he is happy. His home isn’t me, Stephen.”

“Christine…”

“I don’t know what to do,” she sniffed.

“You’re doing the best you can,” he said softly, rubbing her shoulder as he pulled her into a loose hug. “You’re doing your absolute best. I know that he’s aware of that. Give him time. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Stephen straightened away from their embrace and yanked a tissue off his desk. “Feel free to stay here and calm down, if you want. I have to prep for consult in an hour.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

“I brought you ice cream.”

Peter looked up from his spot on the balcony long enough to match Stephen’s face to his voice and then returned to staring out over the city. “Thanks,” he said softly.

Stephen sat down after handing the boy a bowl full of several scoops of chocolate and vanilla ice cream and filled to the brim with mms, whipped cream, oreo crumbles, almond slivers, and cherries.

Peter stuck a cherry in his mouth and then spit out the stem, and they ate in silence for a while. Then Stephen said, “Christine is worried about you.”

He sighed. “I know.”

“She says… she feels that you don’t feel at home here.”

“She’s… done the best she could. She has her own problems and sadness to deal with, she shouldn’t have to worry about mine.”

“You feel that you’re a burden?” Stephen had to swallow his own ice cream before he could ask.

“I… my parents dumped me on Aunt May and Uncle Ben one night on some emergency business trip, and then they never came back. Now they’re gone and… well, here I am.”

Stephen’s chest ached. “I’m… sorry. Peter, Christine loves you. She has always loved you. She worries that you don’t want to be with her, you know?”

Peter swallowed. “That’s… that’s not true at all, I—oh no, she thinks I hate her.”

“Well,” Stephen mused, “It would be easier, maybe, for both of you, if you sat down and just… did what you had to do. Talk it out, cry it out, get it out of the way between you. You are so incredibly smart and you behave well, and you’re Ben and May Parker’s legacy. They raised you, they gave you that big heart to match your big brain. She misses them too and you’re all she has left of them.”

Peter hung his head. “Have I been completely awful to her?”

“No,” Stephen soothed. “No, but consider letting her know how you feel from time to time. Think you can do that?”

Peter nodded. “I will.”

Stephen smiled. “In the meantime, I think this calls for a guys’ weekend. Why don’t we go for a drive? We’ll see where the Audi wants to take us. Christine won’t mind. Maybe we can see the beach or drive out to the woods and just be for a while.”

“I’d like that,” Peter said with a smile.

“You didn’t really have a lot of time to recover,” Stephen frowned. “After it all went down it was straight to school for you. It must be stressful, not really having time to grieve.”

Peter shrugged.

“How are you sleeping?” Stephen asked, and Peter frowned.

“Christine told you about my nightmares.”

Stephen didn’t answer, and that was telling enough.

“I didn’t see their faces, so my nightmares just conjure the worst monsters because… well, because only the worst monsters would murder a family just to rob a store.” Stephen thought he sounded like someone reached into him with a carving knife and hollowed him out. “I’m the last one,” Peter mused, his voice still sounding so, so empty. “The last actual Parker. My grandparents died a long time ago and my father and Ben were the only ones left. Now, it’s just me.”

Stephen wondered what if felt like to have someone’s entire past and history simply fall apart and be erased, and wanted to hug him. “It’s fitting that it’s you, Peter. You are the best of all of them. Remember that, okay?”

Peter scooted his lounge chair closer to Stephen and rested himself against his shoulder, closing his eyes. “I don’t know if I’m the best,” he said quietly. “But I’m the one that lived.”

And it broke. Stephen’s ego-cushioned heart was completely shattered by the pain and burden he heard in those few simple words. Stephen pulled him into a tight embrace and held him until he fell asleep only because he couldn’t do anything else.

That weekend, Peter dumped his duffle bag in the tiny space between the seats and the trunk before sliding into the passenger’s seat and promptly reaching for the radio.

Stephen pressed the button and the car purred to life, and Peter’s face lit up like it always did. “This. Is. Awesome.”

“Let’s play a road trip game.”

“Ooh!” Peter bounced in his seat, and Stephen was glad to see his excitement. “What game?!”

“We’re naming that tune. You’re going to quiz me on music.”

“Seriously? You can’t know even random songs, can you?” 

“Why don’t you try me, kid?” Stephen answered with a wink.

“Fine,” Peter said. “Every time you miss, I get a point. Every time you guess right, I get a point. Winner chooses the ice cream flavor.”

Stephen switched gears and sped around a car. “I’m ready when you are.”

Hours later, they both piled out of the car and into a hotel, holding their sides laughing while trying to check in. “It was Hello America, how are you, not Hello, _I’m_ _Erica_.” Stephen cackled while Peter wiped tears from his eyes and wheezed. 

“That was what I heard,” he explained.

“Who even is Erica?” Stephen asked, and Peter broke into another round of laughter.

Stephen took both their duffle bags and followed the directions the woman gave to the elevator, pressing the button for the second floor. 

“Whatever, you’re the one that thought they were kicking the dancing queen,” Peter cackled. The elevator dinged open and Stephen led them to their room, which was at the end of the hall.

“Okay, fine,” he said as he pushed the door open. “Let’s play misheard lyrics. Best one gets to pick the toppings.”

Peter’s smile fell away from his face, and his wheezing from laughter quickly morphed into sheer terror. He shrunk against the wall, curling into a ball and putting his hands over his ears as his mind rung with the echoes of gunshots.

“What? Hey, Peter? Stay with me, kid.” Stephen guided him to his feet and onto his bed, squatted down in front of him. He was trying to figure out how to bring him away from the sudden panic that overtook him, but Peter seemed lost in his horrific memories.

“I don’t want ice cream,” he mumbled. “I don’t want toppings. I don’t want it, please.”

“Peter,” Stephen soothed, “I need you to take a slow breath, okay? Can you do that? Inhale. And exhale. Can you tell me who you’re with?”

“S-Stephen—”

“That’s right, it’s me, Stephen. Inhale. And exhale. How about where you are?”

“R-road trip. Hot-tel.” But his sobs were quieting, and he seemed to be more aware of himself.

“Mmhmm. Very good. Inhale. And exhale. You’re doing so good, kid. You’re alright. Can you tell me what I said that upset you?”

Peter shook, wrapping his arms tightly around his middle. “I… when… we were sh-shopping for ice cream and… we were picking t-toppings. I don’t want you to die. Not you too, _ please. _”

Stephen’s entire body ached. _He was celebrating._ _His birthday was coming up and he got into the school of his choice. They took away the happiest moments of his life and turned them into this. _He pulled Peter into his arms and hugged him so tightly, the boy wheezed. 

He didn’t protest. He just curled himself against the man’s chest while he grieved, soothing himself to the sound of Stephen’s heart beat.


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People are dealing with pain in different ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always special thanks to FlyingFreeYT for the pre-reading. You’re doing a great job.
> 
> This story is rated E for enjoy responsibly but this chapter specifically contains sexually explicit content so if you wanna skip it you can move down to where you see the horizontal line. If you want a summary of what happened feel free to leave me a comment and I’ll tell you all the tea.
> 
> Ladies and Gentlemen, Tony Stark.

**CHAPTER 4**

He was used to Pepper. They had a routine, and it was a damn good one.

She came home, they ate dinner. She undressed him, which was hot, and she sucked his cock until he could barely see. Her lips stretched around his thickness while her eyes, smudged black because of mascara, peered up at him, and it was so erotic and obscene that he has to sit down, which meant they move onto the bed. Pepper fucked herself with her fingers while she sucked him, and it was hot to watch her. When he literally couldn’t take it anymore, he shoved her hand out of the way so he could fuck her into the mattress while she cried out into his neck. Her body was always just what he needed. Not tonight.

When she was done, she always got up and went to the shower. They chatted idly about the company and their upcoming projects, and other things. Tony would normally make coffee and go to the lab, and she’d come out of the shower, put her clothes on and leave. 

He appreciated that she didn’t ask for more. Pepper had been honest about not needing his bullshit in her life on a personal level, and, if he was completely honest, he hadn’t been interested in pursuing something serious with her. He just made himself available when she wanted to fuck, and vice versa. They remained friends, good ones. Just that they saw eachother naked, sometimes.

Tonight was different. She showered, put on a robe, and sat down next to him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“He said that too. He still left.” He laid back on his bed and closed his eyes. “I think I love him, Pep.”

After the attack on New York, he… well, he became an utter moron and decided to, well, to pursue Captain America—Steve Rogers. Things had always been rocky with them, if he was honest. Steve always seemed to find things to nitpick about him. When the sex finally happened—and trust him, that took a long time due to Steve’s need for them to be ‘serious about each other first’—it was fantastic. Steve was responsive and so, so sexy, and Tony found himself quickly getting addicted. But Steve had hang-ups he’d refused to talk about—that was, before his unexpected visit tonight.

_ “I didn’t know,” he whispered, and there were tears in his eyes. “I would never have…” _

_ “You’d never have tried to be with me.” Tony had gotten up and turned to the window, his entire body hot, the kind of hot that made his heart pound in his ears and his chest ache. Rejection always hurt like a bitch, didn’t it? _

_ “Tony—that’s not true, I…” _

_ “Don’t say it. If you’re going to go, just go. I can’t stop you.” _

_ “Tony…” _

_ “Get out.” _

_ Steve sighed, but he still stood up. He still turned toward the door, started walking… he still was going to leave. “For what it’s worth,” he whispered, “besides Bucky, the only person I’ve ever trusted like this is you. I… I can’t leave him out there. He’s at risk of being brainwashed again or worse. He—I grew up with him. We signed up together—granted, I ended up going in, actually, way after he did, but he was my best friend. My… my first love. He was my entire life and I can’t just leave him out there.” _

_ Tony swallowed. He didn’t understand, but he nodded anyway. “Fine,” he whispered. “Good luck, Steve.” _

_ “Tony… please take care of yourself.” _

_ “You too.” _

Steve was the first person he’d dated in a very long time. He’d been attached to their stupid fights, their hot make-ups, their fleeting moments in between. He’d been equally irritated and enamored by the Captain’s black-and-white view of morality. Even though they butted heads often, he was so happy to find someone that cared about the world as much as Steve did—it was one of the things that had earned him Tony’s genuine respect.

Now Tony was pretty sure he hated it. “He is in love with someone else. Has been for a long time. Now that they’re around again…”

Pepper squeezed “I’m glad he was honest about it, at least. I’d hate for you to be in love with him and him go behind your back to be with them.”

Tony sighed. “Yeah, there’s that, I guess. Worse than being left for someone else is not even knowing about it.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I will be if you come over tomorrow. And… maybe dump all my liquor. Actually, not all of it. Leave like a bottle or three.”

Pepper frowned. “One.”

“Fine. I love you, Pep.”

“I know.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see you around, Tony. Please actually sleep.”

“Sure.”

They both knew he wouldn’t.

* * *

When Peter collapsed onto the couch on Sunday evening, Christine was already waiting for him with popcorn and hot chocolate. Peter forewent the mug and the popcorn and pulled her into a tight hug.

Crhistine felt her eyes water as she squeezed him tightly. “Peter,” she breathed, and he tucked his face against her neck as a sob rattled his ribs. His breaths came harshly and he shook as he cried.

“I’m sorry, Aunty Christine,” he whimpered. 

“Me too,” she whispered.

Neither one had any idea how long they stood there crying, but eventually, Peter seemed exhausted and drained when they were done, but they slumped onto the couch together, still embracing loosely.

“Stephen said you had an episode of panic.”

Peter nodded.

“Do you… want to talk about it?”

Peter shook his head. “Not yet, Aunty Christine.” He leaned into her, telling her without words that he wasn’t trying to shut her out, he was just trying to process everything. “I’m scared all the time,” he finally whispered. “People slam their store gates shut and I have to bit my tongue so I don’t scream. I walk by Mr. Delmar’s sometimes—I can’t even go in there anymore. I feel like everything about my life stopped being normal. I don’t know what to do.”

Christine rubbed his back tenderly. “Do you know that when you were born, May painted the mural in your old room?”

Peter smiled widely. “Really?”

“Yeah. It looked horrific.”

“It didn’t! I always liked it. I didn’t know she could paint.”

“She did it less when she got married but from time to time, she’d send me something. She definitely improved over the years. She always loved painting photorealistic things.” Christine pulls Peter into her bedroom, pointing at a painting mounted near the window. “She painted that one a couple of years ago.”

Peter’s eyes looked like they were going to fall out of his head. A blur of green and blue and brown suggested some out of focus shrubbery under a blue sky and a single, crystal-white line stretched across the corner of the canvass, a drop of water stuck to it wherein all the trees were in focus, upside down. The tiny ball of water was followed by another, smaller one further up on the line, and that one was being held by the front legs of a tiny, black spider.

“Aunt May did that?”

“Yeah. She said she saw it one day in Central Park and took you there several times so that you and Ben could play while she finished it.”

Peter’s eyes watered. “Those were the best days of my life,” he whispered. “Ben and I played and bought ice cream… he taught me all kinds of things.” He sniffed, wiping at his face with his sleeve. “Can I keep it?” he whispered.

Christine smiled. “It’s yours. We’ll hang it in your room together after dinner.”

“Can you tell me more?” he pleaded, anxiety knotting his chest. “I… was there more I didn’t know? What was she like when she was my age? I… still call her voice mail,” he chokes.

“Oh, baby,” she whispered, pulling him tightly against her. “I miss them too, sweetheart.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem like it,” he whispered. “You just went back to work and—and it didn’t seem like it hurt that long.”

She pulled him to the bed and sat down. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought it would be best if you… well, if you didn’t have to see me be a mess, too.” She sighed, pulling her hand through her hair. “Sometimes, when you speak, you sound just like them—even the way your hands move when you talk reminds me of how she was when she was in high school. You’re more like her than you think.”

“Sometimes I wish I could tell you,” Peter said. “I didn’t know you—I didn’t think…”

“That’s my fault. I promise, I won’t hide it from you anymore.”

“Okay.”

She took his hand. “I use work, too, you know? To distract me.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah. Decathlon helps sometimes too.”

“Does Stephen help, too?”

“Yeah. I think he’s my best friend. Is that weird?”

“Not at all. I’m glad you guys get along so well.”

Peter gave her a sly glance. “You still like him, don’t you?”

Christine stared at him, and he burst into laughter.


	5. five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Peter get together to talk about crushes, old and new, and vent about their day. One could say this qualifies as father-son bonding, but neither one would admit that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natch, [FlyingFreeYT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingFreeYT/pseuds/FlyingFreeYT) came through with the beta read and I appreciate so much all of the hard work! *A round of applause*
> 
> Happy Reading!

**CHAPTER 5**

Peter did get into band. His band practices were always first thing in the morning, which meant he had to be on the train headed for school by 6 in the morning so that he can be in school by 7. He played the clarinet and he was good enough at it that they let him sit closer to the front. They had two songs to go over and he was always exhausted. It was why he hadn’t noticed the only girl in the trumpet section until almost Christmas.

She had smooth brown skin and glittering dark eyes, and for some reason, Peter kept staring at her eyebrows. Maybe it was because their arch was so delicate and pretty, or maybe it was because the left one always pulled down more than the right when she made a mistake, which was rare.

She was wearing a mustard yellow shirt with a white bow at the collar and jeans that hugged her hips just right when she leaned forward in concentration. He missed more than a few notes and Mr. Bloomstein glared at him and told him to focus.

He focused plenty, and he focused even more at lunch. Sonya went to sit with one of her other friends and had been sitting there every lunch period since, so he worked up the nerve to ask her name.

“Liz,” she answered with a smile.

“Liz,” he repeated, and his voice shook. Jesus, he sounded like he was eleven years old, not a freshman in high school. “You’re great in band,” he said lamely.

“Thanks,” she answered. She wrapped her arms around her books which were pressed against her chest as she turned out of the music room and moved toward her first class, AP Chemistry. 

“I… you sit with people at lunch? I mean—I think I’d like to eat you—you know, have you sit with my friends at lunch, while we eat actual food? I mean, I would be there too so, you know—”

Liz smiled. “That’s so nice of you,” she said kindly. “I’d love to have lunch with you today.”

If he were in a cartoon, his irises would literally turn heart-shaped.

“But I promised Mr. Allen that I would make up my Calculus test during lunch.”

Peter tried to open up the ground so that it would swallow him, but unfortunately, he didn’t have superpowers. Instead he just said, “Oh—well good luck. I mean, I hope you do well on your test.”

“Thanks, Peter.”

She was almost all the way down the hallway before he realized it.

“She… she knows my name!” The heart-eyes was back instantly.

After Chemistry, Peter ran to his locker and immediately found Ned, who was waiting for him, ready for their only block together on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which was English class. Honestly, Peter felt bad for the teacher there. Trying to teach Shakespeare to a bunch of science and math nerds at any time in the morning was probably a job for stronger people than Mr. Jones, but he was passionate about it and, if nothing else, his passion for the topics made for good memes in the class’s various group project and assignment chats. 

Ned was showing him one of those memes when he interrupted and said, “I met the one” with the most dramatic and dreamy expression he could have possibly summoned.

Ned immediately put his phone away. “Tell me more,” he said, placing his chin in his hand and crossing his other arm over his chest to hold his elbow up.

“Her name is Liz and she’s  _ beautiful.  _ And she plays the trumpet and I think I love her. But I bombed it,” he finished, his shoulders slumping.

“It can’t be that bad.”

“I tried to invite her to lunch but I think I implied I wanted to eat her. She obviously had something else to do. You know, besides being eaten at lunch.”

“Well, at least you were honest.”

Peter stared at him. “You’re disgusting,” he snorted.

“It was a Freudian slip, my friend.” Ned patted his back.

Peter rolled his eyes, changing the topic. “She’s not that kind of girl. Actually, she’s not like a lot of girls. She’s…  _ classy. _ ”

“My out-of-your-league-dar is alarming so loud I’m going deaf.”

“Ouch,” Peter muttered. “I can be classy.”

“Of course you can,” Ned answered kindly. “You’re the classiest nerd I know.”

“Thanks, man.”

They chattered about her all the way through English. He found out that her last name was Allan and that she was in yearbook but had come to school too late to try out for Decathlon. Peter decided that he would cajole Mr. Harrington into letting her take the test. She seemed like a good leader, and Peter could be very persuasive if he wanted to be.

This had to work. He had to get to know Liz Allan.

* * *

Since Dr. Ben Carson had gone and done something stupid like get into politics (for a genius, the guy sure was bad at that), Dr. Stephen Strange was one of the few big names in craniopagus-twin cases left in the United States that could perform successful separation surgeries. (That was an exaggeration, of course, but the point still stood and Stephen was proud of his advancements in the surgical techniques.)

He took several weeks off before the surgery in order to rest and study the case, including all the scans he could possibly get his hands on in order to map the blood vessels and plan the surgery as best he could. Separating the spaghetti string of blood vessels, separating the skull, reconstructing it for each twin, and all while keeping their heart rates normal and keeping from creating any damage to either brain (which were thankfully separated) would take at least 12 hours, if not longer. If these scans were enough (they normally weren’t), then he could probably do it in 16 if there were complications. He started to plan for those complications as well. 

These twins were two years old—they had lived conjoined for quite some time, he supposed, and there were plenty of conjoined twins that could live stuck together even longer, perhaps even a normal life-span. But in this case, Baby A was starting to take a toll on Baby B’s heart and they couldn’t remain conjoined any longer. Their hearts and bleeding could be an enormous problem. There was a chance they’d have to put them on a heart-lung machine during all or part of the surgery to reduce bleeding. He figured he’d have to be ready for them to crash anyway because this was a complicated surgery, but he still planned for it anyway.

Dr. Nicodemus West wasn’t such a planner, but then, he rarely did surgeries like this. Still, he called a meeting with him and the surgical nurses and everyone who would be attending each twin during the surgery, including plastic surgeons, cardiologists, and other doctors, so that he could share his war plans and hear what they thought about any other complications. 

The nurses were very good about requesting supplies and studying the plan carefully, pointing out things they thought needed reconsideration. They were on his team for a reason and he appreciated them with everything he was. He was the best neurosurgeon in the US for more than one reason—his own intellect, but also, the team he chose.

Nic West wasn’t on that team most of the time—honestly, fuck that guy. But, he needed another neurosurgeon to be in the room with him once the twins were separated. Naturally, Nic was worried about the separation instead of  _ his _ part of the surgery. 

Stephen gritted his teeth. “That’s not your concern, Dr. West,” he said more than once. Eventually, he snapped. “Stop talking unless I need you to answer.”

“…Seriously?”

“Seriously. You’re distracting my team and your questions are pointless. Focus on your part of the goddamn surgery and stop questioning mine.”

“Literally everyone has been sitting here picking apart your plan, and now you’re going to just be angry at me?”

“No, everyone in here is concerned with what they need for their part of the surgery, and their questioning of the plan that they’ve spent days and weeks studying and forming is so that they can perform at the level I expect of them. I suggest you do the same, or I can find another doctor. There are so many people that would be willing to operate alongside the great Dr. Strange. You’re replaceable, Dr. West. If you won’t do your job, I will find someone who will.”

Nic seethed. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“Take a break,” Stephen said, dismissing him. “Come back when you’re ready to focus.”

The door slammed shut with a loud rattle as Nic left the room, humiliated. Stephen continued the meeting as if nothing had happened. Later, he found Christine working in the ER and she gave him a disapproving look that meant Nic West had tattled on him.

“You like humiliating him, don’t you?” she said by way of greeting.

“Only if he deserves it,” he replied with a grin. “Anything interesting going on down here?”

She shrugged. “Run-of-the-mill kids with fevers and stupid drunks and workplace injuries. Nothing crazy so far, but the night is still young.”

“The night hasn’t even been born yet,” Stephen snorted, glancing at his watch which read 14:45. “Give it some time.”

She laughed. “You’re right.”

“Aren’t I always?”

She gave him her patented The Look™ and said, “No.”

“Damn. Well, do me a favor and keep that a secret from Dr. Douche over there, will you?”

She snorted. “Whatever, Dr. Weird.”

“Can you please come up with something more original? You think I haven’t heard all the Weird jokes?”

“Unlike some people, I don’t have time to come up with ways your name is Weird because I have to go do doctor things. It’s, like, my job, you know?”

“Yeah, have fun with that. I’m gonna go be done with  _ my _ job now.”

“Can you pick up Peter?”

“Yeah. We’ll have dinner around, don’t worry.”

“Okay. Thank you.” She smiled gratefully at him, and he blinked.

“Sure,” he said, returning the grin a little belatedly. He walked away a little less stressed than he was before.

* * *

Peter was anxious and excited when he finally met Stephen outside of his school. They took the train and bought ice cream at Cold Stone in Times Square, both of them feeling a little more like tourists than they had any right to. Stephen memorized Peter’s order and Peter waited outside while he bought it—it was a habit they were forming now, since Peter avoided going into lots of places like this since the robbery. Stephen hoped that Peter would make a breakthrough in his therapy regarding that soon.

They decided to eat near the famous red steps in the center of the square, scooting to the side so that the tourists could take their pictures. While they ate, Stephen vented his mind about Nic West and his ridiculous attitude. Peter burst out laughing a few times and then grilled him about his entire surgical process, what it was like to study all of those scans, what he was looking for when he studied them. Stephen found himself relaxing as he explained the process in detail and told him about the risks and complications they were facing, and asked what he thought were good solutions to problems he hadn’t found answers for. A lot of times, the teen pointed out things that seemed a lot simpler than Stephen was making them. Sometimes, he was wrong, and Stephen told him why that would be a mistake. Others, Stephen lifted his eyebrows and tipped his head, conceding the point. He made mental notes of those things to research them later on.

When Peter finally took the last bite, he smiled and said, “You’ve got this, Dr. Strange. Dr. West is going to be amazed at you like he always is. I think he antagonizes you so much because he’s lowkey a fan.”

Stephen couldn’t help himself, he burst out laughing. “That so?”

“Sure. Sometimes bullies are mean because they’re intimidated by how much they like you or how much better or nicer someone is.”

A little elementary, but the point still hit home. “Should I go easy on him?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Hell no. Oh my God, I met the most amazing girl today.”

“Oh, now we’re getting to the real stuff. Forget neurosurgery, this girl is the real story.”

Peter turned pink. “She’s really pretty. She was so nice to me even though I was a complete idiot.”

Stephen sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean. It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“I accidentally asked if I could eat her instead of eat lunch with her and my friends.”

Stephen stared. “Seriously?”

“Look, it wasn’t my finest moment, okay?! Anyway, Ned says she’s probably out of my league anyway.”

Stephen nodded. “Those are the best girls. The ones you know you have to work to deserve.”

“Is my Aunt one of those girls?” Peter asked slyly.

“Sure is. I was a complete idiot too, if it helps.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“It’s worse.”

“I feel like we should be having this conversation in a bar.”

Stephen snorted. “Your aunt would skin me alive and have my pelt preserved in some sort of weird memoriam to the surgeon I once was.”

“…Eww? Why was that so detailed?”

Stephen laughed. “Your aunt is an amazing woman. Don’t let just anyone around her, you hear?”

“Loud and clear,” Peter said. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Are you just anyone?”

“No,” Stephen said honestly. “She’s my best friend.”

“You sound like me, like how I wish Liz liked me back.”

“We had a good time,” he said quietly. “But I was selfish. I am, still. I  _ like  _ being selfish, looking after myself and my accomplishments. She sees it as a flaw. Maybe she’s right, but I can’t stop now and she deserves what she wants.”

“I don’t think you’re selfish. You don’t have to do all the things you do for her or for me. You still do.”

“I love her,” Stephen answered simply. “I can’t tell you that it’s the same love I had for her a few years ago. Maybe it has changed, maybe it hasn’t. All I can tell you is that it won’t ever go away, even if hers did for me. I’m okay with that.”

“That doesn’t sound very selfish to me.”

Stephen shrugged, feeling a little vulnerable.

“I’m glad you’re our friend.”

“Thanks, Peter. I am very glad you are mine.”

“It’s my duty as a friend to tell you that Aunty Christine still has a crush on you.”

Stephen choked.

“But whatever you did last time is enough for her to feel like once bitten is twice as shy.”

“That’s fair,” Stephen said.

“Do you ever try to date other people?”

Stephen shrugged. “I don’t know. No one can ever keep up.” He winked. “Women are intimidated by smart men.”

Peter grinned. “Oh, is that what happened?”

“Yes. You weren’t an idiot, you just transcended her level of intelligence.”

“Nobody could do that,” Peter said dreamily. “She’s so smart. She plays the trumpet and she’s in yearbook and she’s also student council, and I heard from MJ that she’s in the running for valedictorian. I think I love her…”

“Aww,” Stephen grinned. “That’s cute. Good luck, kid.”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling.


	6. six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen is on top of the world. but you know what they say--the higher they are, the harder they fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always special thanks to FlyingFreeYT for pre-reading and being a huge help.
> 
> Gonna go ahead and put a TRIGGER WARNING right here--we're gonna talk very briefly about Stephen's past including his dead sister and the aftermath of it. there's some implication of abuse in relationship with that, which I'll cover in more detail in another chapter. We're also covering the crash so TW for that. You've been warned, reader discretion advised, angst ensues, you've been warned, you've been warned, you've been warned.
> 
> Cool. Now that that's out of the way, I hope you guys love the chapter. come scream with me in the comments! I love to know what you think.

**CHAPTER 6**

Stephen was childishly excited. He shouldn’t have been—these dinners were usually boring and mundane. It wasn’t the first time he’d been invited to one, whether it be to accept an award or give a speech or even just grace them with his presence for photos, but this felt different.

He was on top of the world. His conjoined twin surgery had been successful despite various complications, and he and his team ended up spending an extra four hours working around them, rounding it off at twenty hours’ op time. He was exhausted by the end and slept probably for days, but the surgery even made news and NBC had asked him to come for a live interview about the techniques he’d had to try that had been risky, and other things about caring for conjoined twins. He’d put on his best media smile and let the reporters know once again why he was the best in the world.

He was just finishing up with a patient and getting ready to do some paperwork at his desk when Christine ran toward him, her expression harried. “Stephen! Wait up,” she called, jogging to a stop in front of him and handing him a tablet. “I need you to look at this. It’s a GSW.”

Stephen stared at the tablet in her hand for a moment before swiping through the images and the patient’s chart quickly. “It’s amazing you kept him alive,” he murmured. “Apneic, failed the brain stem test… and the apnea reflex test—I think I found the problem, Dr. Palmer.” He zoomed in. “You left a bullet in his head?” He snarked, and she rolled her eyes.

“Thanks,” she answered sarcastically. “It’s impinging on the medulla. I needed a specialist—Nic diagnosed brain death. Something about that doesn’t feel right to me—”

His eyes widened. “We have to run.” There was no time to explain his thought process right then, but she trusted him enough to tear off after him without asking questions. It made him smile.

Her voice was surprised and hard as she asked, “Dr. West, what are you doing?” while Stephen caught his breath.

“Organ harvest? He’s a donor.”

“What? Slow down. I did not agree to that.”

“I don’t need you to,” Nic answered, glancing at Dr. Strange and stiffening. “We already called brain death.”

“Prematurely,” Stephen answered. “We need to get him prepped for a suboccipital craniotomy.”

“Not going to let you operate on a dead man,” Dr. West sniffed.

Stephen felt his spine get hot.  _ Not going to let him? Who the fuck did Nic think he was?  _ He steadied himself with a breath. Well, if that was how Nic wanted to play, Stephen would have him writhing in his own humiliation soon enough. “What do you see?” he asked, showing the close up of the injured brain.

“A bullet,” Nic answered, his expression reading, ‘what’s your point?’

“A  _ perfect _ bullet,” Stephen answered. “It’s been hardened. You harden a bullet by alloying lead with antimony—a toxic metal. And that’s leeched into the cerebral spinal fluid…”

Nic’s eyes widened. “Rapid-onset central nervous system shut-down…”

“We have to go,” Christine insisted.

“The patient’s not dead, but he’s dying. Still want to harvest his organs?”

Gaping for a long moment, they almost made it down the hall before the doctor called, “I’ll assist you?!”

“No. Dr. Palmer will assist me,” Stephen answered, feeling smug at the expression on the doctor’s stupid face. God, he truly hated that man.

In the operating room, Stephen was already tired of Nic’s constant questioning of everything he did. This time, he was about to remove the bullet from the patient’s head—they didn’t have time to set up image guidance, and he was confident enough that he could remove it with minimal damage without it. Nic had to go and say, “now isn’t the time for showing off,” and Stephen had to bite back a growl.

“How about ten minutes ago, when you called the wrong time of death?” He snipped back, and that shut the doctor up. Nothing made the doctor feel worse than when he knew he fucked up and Stephen reveled in proving the man wrong as often as he could.

He studied what he saw in front of him carefully—something he’d made a habit of doing during his last major surgery, the craniopagus twins—and noted with pleasure that the man’s cranial nerves were completely intact and his spinal chord itself wasn’t too damaged.

_ Tick… tick… tick… tick… _

He counted 17 ticks before he stopped his approach. He knew his hands were steady enough to remove the bullet even with the distraction, but the sound unnerved him and he wanted to finish putting the two-bit doctor in his place. He said, “Dr. West, cover your watch.”

The man obeyed.

Christine, ever the mediator, reproached him as soon as they’d scrubbed out and spoken to the family. “You know, you didn’t have to humiliate him.”

“Well, I didn’t have to save his patient either, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.” He said the last few words while doing a weird little jig in the hallway, and Christine laughed at his goofiness. Being goofy always got her to stop being mad at him, and this time was no different.

“Nic is a great doctor,” she counted through her chuckle.

“You came to me,” Stephen sing-songed.

“Well, I needed a second opinion.”

“You had a second opinion,” Stephen reasoned. “What you needed was a competent one.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, all the more reason for you to be my neurosurgeon on call. You could make such a difference.”

“I can’t be part of your butcher shop!”

“Hey!”

“I’m fusing transected spinal cords. I'm stimulating neurogenesis in the central nervous system. The work I’m doing is going to save thousands for years to come. In the ER, you get to save one drunk idiot with a gun.”

“Yeah, you’re right. In the ER, we just save lives—no fame, no CNN interviews—”

“It was NBC.”

“—no adoring fans…”

“Speaking of adoring fans, where’s Peter? I thought I’d see him around tonight.”

“I guess I’ll have to stick with Nic. Peter’s at a decathlon competition, he said he’d be home late tonight.”

“Aww man.”

“Needed someone to celebrate your humiliation of Nic with?”

“Yeah, definitely not, although he’s who I’d ask first. Whoa—wait. You guys aren’t… you’re not…”

“Aren’t what?”

“Sleeping together? Sorry, I thought I made that clear with my disgust.”

“No, I actually have a very strict rule against dating co-workers—I call it the Strange policy.”

You know, Stephen could spend the rest of his life humiliating people that tried to zing him like this, it was one of his few pleasures in life. Christine was one of a two-person list of people whose snark he could brush off with a laugh and a quippy reply.

“Oh, well good. I’m glad something’s named after me,” he answered, giving her her favorite boyish grin. “I invented a laminectomy procedure, and yet somehow no one seems to want to call it the Strange technique—”

“ _ We  _ invented that technique—”

“Well, regardless, I’m very flattered by your policy.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, but he just gave her that stupid, boyish grin. Eventually, she caved. She rolled her eyes at him a lot, and he liked it. She didn’t take his shit.

“Look,” he said, “I’m talking tonight at a Neurological Society dinner. Come with me.”

“Another speaking engagement? So romantic.”

There she was, not taking his shit. “You used to love coming to those things with me. We had fun together,” he persisted. He already knew the answer.

“No,  _ you _ had fun. They weren’t about us, they were about you.” The way her voice went up at the end betrayed the sting of pain she still felt over him, and he let the subject drop, feeling bad about hurting her.

“Alright, alright. I guess it’s fitting that I go on my own then. I’ll see Peter tomorrow,” he called after her as she walked away. Wanting to lift the mood, he added, “we could hyphenate it! The Strange-Palmer technique?”

She turned back, her brown eyes positively glittering with amusement. “Palmer-Strange,” she said, and he couldn’t help his laughter.

He didn’t know it yet, but that was the last time he saw her smile for him like that.

* * *

He managed to cross the bridge in good time. He wished Peter was with him as he raised the gear and sped around another car. He took the exit to a road beside the river, loving how the Audi purred as he pushed it to go faster.

Peter always loved the freedom of the road and the speed, and he definitely lived for the thrill. He definitely was less reckless when Peter was around, but this time, the road cleared and it was just him and his car, and he whooped a little as he opened her up. The car was pushing 70 miles per hour, then 80. Ninety came and went, too.

He really shouldn’t have been going that fast and taking a phone call at the same time—he was used to handling distractions, focusing on one thing while receiving information. This should have been no different. He slowed down slightly, from 96 to 74.

He was wearing his favorite suit and his favorite watch—his watch collection was something he also took pride in, especially because it, like his cars, was something he splurged on directly as a result of his success. This watch was the first truly, exorbitantly expensive watch he ever bought, a Chanel men’s watch that was simple enough to go with most suits, the gold and opal details of the watch accented by the black, fine alligator leather that wrapped around his wrist. The watch started at 35 thousand dollars.

He always got sentimental and wore it at speaking engagements like this one. He owed his success to his own determination and strength, and he only loved showing off because there was an entire world that looked up to him about it, now. He loved speaking, sharing his knowledge and his skill with other surgeons and specialists—he owed his success to them, too. He wanted them to see that he was great, better than he had ever been before. So he bought expensive clothes and watches, and a penthouse in Manhattan. He bought himself fast cars and drove them with people he cared about. He made himself a status symbol in the medical world—he had the life all doctors dreamed about.

It hadn’t always been that way. There was a time when—

Lights. Blinding, bright white lights—

Too fast, he couldn’t stop. 

He swerved.

The ensuing boom made his ears ring, and he tried to flinch away.

The breath was being punched out of his lungs. His body felt weightless. Everything was too slow—

Everything was too fast. His head was spinning, and everything was exploding—the glass, the air bag. They all made his ears ring.

Silence.

_ Pain. _

Oh god—

The black that overtook him didn’t drown out the pain. His mind frantically tried to explain the pain, why he was panicking, why everything hurt. It came up with all of the times he’d ever been in pain, and each memory made him want to vomit.

_ “It’s your fault! It’s your fault she’s dead!” _

_ “Dad, no—” _

_ Smack!  _ The way his face turned with the open-handed blow explained how his entire head was throbbing in time with his racing heart.  _ “Don’t you ever speak her name again!” _

The kick to his ribs explained the way it hurt to breathe. “ _ You’re worthless!” _

_ “Dad… please…” _

The punch in his gut explained why he was nauseous, why everything was spinning.  _ “Nothing you do will ever be good enough! Do you hear me? You will never replace Donna!” _

He tasted blood. He couldn’t breathe.

It was cold. The cold was numbing his feet. He couldn’t feel his fingers, either.

He tried to get away, but the cold only made him wet.

_ No… _

He was in the river.  _ He was in the river.  _

_ He going to drown. _

_ “It serves you right!”  _ His father’s voice echoed in his mind as he let the blackness finally take him. He drifted in it because he wanted to find Donna and tell her he was sorry.

He didn’t get the chance.

* * *

Stephen wasn’t just anyone. He was Christine’s... something. He hadn’t quite figured them out, but he wasn’t an idiot. Though they hadn’t really talked about it, he had the feeling that Stephen broke her heart. Knowing also how Stephen pushed him, he could be pretty assholish and arrogant when he expected better from someone or felt like someone was wasting his time. He celebrated his own success with gusto and he made sure the world knew about his accomplishments and confidence.

“I can’t believe I got in to the decathlon team!” Peter had cried one day, bouncing in excitement as he showed the posted list of the new scholastic decathlon team to Stephen once, as the doctor was scrubbing out after surgery. He followed the man into his office as he chattered excitedly. “Ned did too! We got the highest scores in the initial test and in the competition round we crushed everybody! But you know, Jordan was kind of pissed that he didn’t get in. Ned doesn’t really talk to him anymore because they argued about him and me. I guess Jordan thought I showing off.”

“What’s wrong with showing off?”

Startled by the question, Peter frowned. “What? I mean, isn’t it not cool to rub it in? Not that I was, but—I mean, I don’t think I somehow just deserved it or something more than anyone else—”

“Stop.”

Peter quieted immediately.

“Christine said she found you asleep in your study packets more than once.”

“Well, yeah, but I had to study—”

“And you made me drill you in physics and chemistry until even I got bored. My point is, you studied your ass off.”

“Everyone did.”

“Well I guess that means you’re just smarter than the rest of them.” Stephen had placed both hands on his shoulders. “That is something worth showing off. You have the dedication to match your talent. You don’t have to hide it because everyone else lacks one of those two things. Be proud of yourself and of your friend. You both got in because you’re the best. Not for any other reason. Jordan doesn’t have to like it. In fact, most people hate when someone shows off their success or skill in something—that’s because they are insecure about their own lacking or slacking. You don’t have time to deal with someone’s petty arguments against your success. It’s not your fault Jordan is a moron and you have better things to do. Straighten your shoulders, dammit. My neck hurts looking at you.” Stephen turned away before he added, “When I’m done here, I’ll buy you ice cream and take you for a drive to celebrate.”

“YES! Ben and Jerry’s?”

“Of course! That’s the spirit.”

Maybe Christine was turned off by his attitude, but Peter sort of admired it. He wanted to be that unfazed by life, that confident in his own skill and worth. Unfortunately, life had taken more than one massive shit on him, and he constantly felt himself tensing for the next one. 

It came when Stephen was in ICU, in a medically-induced coma with so many pins and screws in his hands that it made Peter nauseous to look.

He cursed out a nurse that first night, red-faced and teary-eyed as he screamed at her because she said something to the effect of “I mean, I had hoped that arrogant asshole would get taken down a peg...” during a gossip session between her and someone else about the obvious fact that the chances that the great Dr. Strange would return to the operating theater were extremely minimal. They thought they were being secretive enough, but not so at all.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” he snapped. “You don’t know him. You don’t know him because he knew better than to waste his time on people like you. How dare you?! He could have died! He could die and I... and you’re talking about him like you’re happy this happened! I hope you never find yourself in need of someone like him, but if you do, you’ll be pretty fucking sorry for the way he is now. You’re awful. How could you say something so horrible?” He’d cried quite a bit after that. The nurse, shocked, tried to comfort him, but he jerked away from her, completely outraged. “You don’t fucking deserve him,” he hissed.

He told the ICU’s head nurse not to let that lady come around Stephen again, suddenly furious all over again. So furious, in fact, that he accidentally got that nurse dismissed from her position. He figured that if Stephen had heard him, he’d be equally proud of him for setting someone in their place for a change, and disappointed that he’d lost his cool. He hoped for more of the former.

He was there first when Stephen opened his eyes. He seemed dazed and passed out again almost right away. He still ran to get Christine. She sat with him for over an hour before he woke up again. Peter felt his heart shatter into a million pieces, and each of those shatter into a million more as Stephen slowly came to and realized the state of his hands. The other surgeon, Dr. West as Peter called him, explained that he did the best he could to avoid having to amputate the hands and that if it had been any worse, Stephen would be dead.

He said, “you’ve ruined me” and broke into tears. 

Christine cried with him. So did Peter.


	7. seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always special thanks to FlyingFreeYT for pre-reading. I'm glad you're loving it!

**CHAPTER 7**

Steve returned to the compound a few months later. Tony pined, but he refused to give in to his emotions. Steve was hurting, he could see it. His bestfriend/battlefield-brother/boyfriend was still MIA. He had his friend searching—so were Hill and Natasha, especially since those two could probably find literally anyone on earth. 

Tony didn’t mind. He hoped Steve would find the guy, if for nothing else than the fact that it would finish shattering his heart and Tony could just lick his wounds and move on.

He hated admitting that Steve had hurt him to anyone, especially himself. But Steve made it clear that he was in love with someone else, and Tony had the fucking self-esteem and dignity to not go crawling back to someone who wouldn’t love him.

So he looked away every time Steve walked by. He kept their banter light and didn’t say much about himself. He wore his armor of charming smiles and confidence and sass, and he wore it well. He was as used to that armor as he was to Iron Man armor.

The Avengers began to help Steve, Sam, Fury, and Hill clean up what was left of HYDRA. First they hunted rogue SHIELD agents, then they systematically took HYDRA bases all over. They were an efficient clean up crew, if nothing else.

Loki’s scepter was still missing, and when they found a lead that HYDRA had indeed taken it from SHIELD, they begun targeting bases with key people in them, people that knew about the whereabouts of the scepter.

That was how they came to this base in dead winter, trying to take one of the strongest fortifications that HYDRA still had.

Steve looked good, still. He wore his uniform and his shield comfortably, called the shots easily. Tony’s job was to find a way into the place and if he could get in, look for the scepter. Tony added to himself that he would find any data they possibly could have left behind. Hill would sift through it. Natasha was also good with data and programming and would help recover as much of the deleted data as she could manage.

In the mean time, it was taking too long to actually get in the building. Tony flew around, enjoying being above and watching the fight for just a moment. Cap… he looked good.

He shook his head and went back to work. He found the scepter, but not before… not before…

_ You—could’ve… saved’us… why… didn’t… you—do… more…? _

Cap’s dying breaths echoed in his dreams and in his moments of panic and terror. As he studied the scepter, he realized that he  _ could  _ do more. He’d do everything he could to save Cap. Maybe Cap couldn’t love him, but they’d proven that they could still be a team. And Tony couldn’t let him die, he just couldn’t. “Peace in our time,” he’d said, but what he mean was, “life while we have time.”

So he planned and he tinkered and he studied.

And that’s how Ultron was born. And as soon as he was born, he was desperate and angry, just like Tony had been. And he’d lashed out at JARVIS. Tony grieved for his AI friend, but only briefly. He had a bigger problem on his hands.

The others questioned him. Thor was angry, understandably. His brother had brought the alien invasion down on earth with that scepter, and now the thing was missing. Cap just seemed… disappointed.

“A  _ hostile alien army  _ came charging through a hole in space.  _ We’re standing 300 feet below it,”  _ Tony defended himself. “We’re the Avengers! We can bust arms dealers all the live-long day. But  _ that, _ up there? That’s the endgame.”

Silence.

“How were you guys planning on beating that?”

It was Steve that stepped forward, met his eyes evenly as he always did. “Together,” he said quietly.

“We’ll lose,” Tony said.  _ You’ll die,  _ he wanted to scream.  _ We will all die. Everyone on earth will die, but you— _

“We’ll do that together too,” Steve whispered.

Tony looked into his expressive, baby blue eyes, and he believed him.

Almost.

* * *

Things changed for a while. 

Peter spent a lot of time reading to him. Honestly, Stephen was annoyed with it at first, but then he realized the teen was frightened to fuck that he would die and was being overly attentive and honestly, sort of clingy. He didn’t blame the kid. 

They stayed away from medical books at first because those made Stephen depressed. They read horror and sci-fi instead—short stories by Stephen King were their favorites. When Peter had to be at school, he played longer books on Audible so that Stephen would have something to listen to.

Christine did the best she could, too, but eventually between work and taking care of him, she was always tired, so Peter stepped in more and more frequently, sometimes even doing his homework and sleeping in Stephen’s room. He took on the role of helping Stephen with his needs as if he had been doing it all along. He sat with him through every occupational therapy exercise, which were all excruciatingly painful for Stephen and often reduced him to tears. Sometimes Peter cried with him. Other times, he would just sit on the bed and hold him.

After therapy one particular day, Stephen cried again, but he was angry. “I hate this,” he spit.

Peter was silent.

“I’m a neurosurgeon. I’m the best in the world. I…  _ was _ . Now a 14-year-old kid has to read me to sleep and shave my face, pick up my fork and feed me like I’m a goddamned baby—”

Peter simply said, “I’m glad that someone is.”

It stopped Stephen’s rant short.

“Look, Stephen, I haven’t known you for that long, but I know this is uncomfortable and terrifying. I don’t know what you’re going through—I don’t know what it’s like to be the olympian or football star that gets told they’ll never walk again, or the doctor who’s told he can’t be a doctor anymore. I would honestly do anything to go back in time and stop it, but I can’t do that and neither can you. What I do know is what it’s like to see my entire future and everything I thought I knew go up in smoke. It happened to me twice already.”

Stephen swallowed. This kid’s entire life fell apart  _ twice.  _ It was different, Stephen rationalized. He was a child, still with his entire life ahead of him. He still had pieces to pick up—his intellect, his body parts still in one piece… of course the kid was fine. He was fine because he didn’t lose the part of himself he knew was worth the most.

“I’m fine,” Peter whispered. “I’m still here because I wasn’t alone. You aren’t alone, okay? I’m here with you and so is Christine, and we’re here so that you won’t be alone. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you next but we’re not leaving you. I don’t care about reading you books and papers or shaving your face or any of it because it’s better than you being dead or in a coma, and because my entire life went up in smoke and you were there for me and Christine. We need you. I need you. And… and I’m okay with you needing me too. You don’t have to feel like you need to pay us back for helping you, not after everything you’ve done. What I want from you is for you to put your head down and get through this. Stop pushing Aunty Christine away and let us do this for you.”

Not for the first time, Stephen said, “you’re a good kid, Peter.”

After that, he didn’t argue when Peter forced him out of bed and into the chair by the window or out to walk around inside the hospital courtyards. He didn’t argue when Peter tried to bring him things, activities and movies to make him feel less bored. He worked through all his exercises without complaint, completely determined to get his hands back and make it out of this hospital. He tried not to be embarrassed when Christine had to help him with basic hygiene or Peter sat with him to feed him.

In the spring, Stephen started requesting science books again. Their discussions about medical techniques and new developments were lively and spirited, and Peter was happy about that because it felt just like old times. He quit chess club and band quietly, wanting to spend more time in the hospital with Stephen, who was obviously depressed and lonely. As winter faded, his Decathlon meets and study sessions became longer, more often, more intense as they approached states and nationals at the end of the year, and Stephen’s improvements were gradual and slow. 

Stephen tentatively brought up ideas of surgeries with Peter, who took on the task like a madman with a mission. Every day, their reading sessions turned into reading papers about new techniques in hand reconstruction and treatments for certain types of nerve damage. They also studied far-fetched ideas and discarded them. Surgery over surgery, Peter helped him recover with the same words. “You’re not alone. We’re going to get your hands back. We’ll find a way together.”

The first surgery went well. It was a nerve repair technique that he’d developed, actually, and it served to increase his functionality quite a bit. The second was one like it, but he spent almost a month in the hospital due to an infection from a complication in the surgery.

Peter was the one that dragged him off to OT every other day and made him do his exercises at home. He stopped talking to him about the next surgery until Stephen showed willingness to work through his exercises.

He had printed up a paper on an experimental surgery that involved stenting the brachial arteries, but Peter didn’t even look at it until after they’d gone through all of his exercises and Peter had applied the soothing heat pads.

“This seems redundant,” he muttered as he read the paper. “More surgery to promote faster healing? Won’t that defeat the purpose?”

“In the short term, probably. But in the long term, I need to increase bloodflow to the affected area to better improve my healing.”

“The risks are insane. Dr. Strange, they’re talking about fatal bloodclots and possible loss of limb here.”

“Peter, you know those are worst-case scenarios and only happen to a fraction of one percent of patients.”

“The blood clots happened in 19% of cases, that’s pretty high— that’s almost every one in five! And out of those, one in eight cases was dangerous or fatal! I have to say, I don’t think this is a good idea. I know you wanna heal faster, but I think the only thing that’s going to help now is giving yourself time to recover before going into more surgeries, especially ones that could end up closing up the artery you’re actually trying to open or even killing you. There are no short cuts, you know.”

“Are you saying I should give up?”

“I’m saying, there has to be something less risky than this. And I’m saying, you should wait.”

“Wait? I don’t have any time!”

“You’ll have plenty of time if they end up having to chop your hand off or if your big, awesome brain  _ explodes _ and you die.”

Stephen winced. “Okay, you’re right. I need time to come up with the money anyway.”

“W-w—money?!”

“Yeah. I’m gonna have to start dipping into my investments now to keep up with all of this—the car insurance helped minimally, but I’m doing all of this on my own, now. My health insurance won’t cover the more experimental things—”

“Stephen all of that is fine but—but how the heck are  _ you  _ paying for things? Basic things like food and heat and—”

“I’m fine.” He was not fine. He’d spent all of his savings just paying bills, and he was now living off trust money. Surgery over surgery, he lost hope that he could recover. He tried not to disappoint the love and hope in the boy’s eyes anyway.

He started to listen and participate in Peter’s school life again, too.When they won the state competition and qualified for nationals, Stephen laughed and cheered with him as he bounced all over the room, recounting the entire story with all of the intensity of a blockbuster movie. “And then the buzzer went off, but I put my pencil down  _ just  _ in time! Without that one answer, we would have missed Nationals by one point! Can you believe it? And Ned—oh boy, Ned was the star of the show! Liz too, she was there, but as an alternate. She managed to come in just at the right moment though, because it turned out that Freddy ate some bad chicken. Liz told me in a text that he wouldn’t have gotten those questions right anyway. Can you believe it?! Everything went just right, and we studied so hard, and… we did it, Stephen! We won!”

“So you managed to get Liz onto the team, did you?”

“Yes, and her scores qualify her for team leader next year. It was going to be Ned or me, but she’s done a great job even though she came in mid-year. Harrington likes her a lot and she’s always reading these team building and leadership books.”

“I see the hearts in your eyes, kid.”

Peter flushed. His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it briefly, then his eyes widened. In the next moment, he launched himself at Stephen, still in his bed.

“Oof,” he coughed, carefully returning the embrace. “What’s that for?” He was surprised by the tears he felt on his neck. “Peter?”

Peter just clung to him until Christine walked in with Nic not two minutes later.

“Great news, Stephen,” Nic said kindly. He always had a better bedside manner than Stephen did, if he was honest. Less intelligent people for some reason always did better with emotions.

Christine sat on his other side and placed her hand over his scarred one, her smile relieved. “Nic and I talked to all of your doctors. It’s been a long few months, but this is it. You’re finally well enough to go home, Stephen.”

Stephen swallowed. Home? But… what about his hands?


	8. eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen is tying up loose ends. all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, special thanks to FlyingFreeYT for pre-reading as well as [ Elisa Phoenix ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisaPhoenix/pseuds/ElisaPhoenix).
> 
> this chapter comes with a heavy trigger warning. Stephen is in a shitty place. He feels like he has nothing left and he's gonna do plenty of dumb shit. so. tw for depression, attempted suicide, past/referenced child abuse. reader discretion advised. if you feel like you can't or shouldn't read this, I am happy to provide you a summary if you drop me a comment or find me on discord, where my user is @daisypwrites.

**CHAPTER 8**

“I’m sorry, Peter. Not today.”

Peter sighed. “I need your help with this, it’s important! Please!”

Stephen held back a derisive scoff, but only barely. “You’ve been doing fine on your own. What do you need me for?”

“Alright,” Peter huffed, angry and clearly hurt. “You know what? Whatever.” He hung up before Stephen could get a word out, and Stephen groaned his frustration. He just wasn’t going to give up on the man, was he? _ He should. _That part of his conscience sounded suspiciously like his father’s voice.

He accepted another phone call instead. This one was more important anyway. He was selling his cars. All of them. Suddenly, his hands were shaking and not because of pain or nerve damage. His body was simultaneously hot and cold, and his heart was pounding.

There were four—there used to be five, but his R8… well, he’s not as sorry to see that go as his Lamborghini Huracan. Like the R8 and his Chanel watch, the Lamborghini was one of his first splurges on a car, his first true moment of realization that he was _ wealthy _ and by his own means. It was his first sign that he made it on his own.

And it was one of the last signs that he wasn’t going to make it on his own. Selling the Lambo was a new low, but he needed to do it. He had to pay off the loan he’d taken against his retirement, and he had to stop withdrawing from his trust or else he’d have literally nothing. He sold his house in the lower west side just as a buffer, money he added to his investments in case he had to live off them for a while. He was scrambling his resources now and it was making him constantly stressed.

_ Was this what it was like for unwealthy people to live between paychecks? _

It honestly sucked. 

They were coming to pick up two of the cars today, the Lamborghini and his other prized possession, the Maserati Gran Turismo. The car was classic, rich elegance and luxury and he splurged on it with the proceeds from one of his research projects. He had grinned like a kid when it arrived, amazed that he actually got to have a true ‘rich person car’. It was all thanks to his hard work and steady hands.

He didn’t have steady hands or work anymore, so he couldn’t keep the car.

He didn’t have steady hands anymore.

He didn’t have work anymore.

_ He didn’t have anything anymore. _

He swallowed. What the hell was he going to be worth now? 

_ Nothing. _ No success to revel in, no money coming in. He was going to be a waste of space and potential now, just like everyone else. _ Why did I even live? _

The question morphed as it echoed in his mind, until it wasn’t him asking it, but his father: _ “Why did you even live?! Why you and not her?” _

He tried, but he couldn’t keep his lunch down. Hurling harshly into the toilet, he just spent a few moments trying to catch his breath before he stood up, splashed some water on his face and rinsed his mouth. Clutching at the cold porcelain had made his hands cram, so he had to run them under warm water too in order to get them to release. The pain was excruciating.

Christine’s phone number and picture were flashing on his phone when he got back to the living room. “What?” he muttered.

“Open the door.”

“Not right now, I’m busy.”

“Busy? Busy selling all of your cars? Don’t think I didn’t notice that there are people here with tow trucks waiting to be let into your garage!”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

Christine sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” He snorted.

“You made Peter cry.”

Stephen winced. “I didn’t mean to,” he muttered.

“What is with you? You’re selling all of your stuff? You won’t let us see you? Open the goddamn door, Strange!”

“Christine… please just let it be. I’ll be alright, I promise.”

“Bullshit!”

“My father was right. There, I said it. I would have been better off dying than Donna, just like I would be better off dead, now.”

Christine sucked in a sharp breath. “Stephen… that’s not true. Please let me in, let me help you.”

“You can’t help me, Christine. No one can, not anymore.” 

He hung up.

* * *

“Hey! Nerd. Are you paying attention?”

Peter scrubbed his face with his hands. “Honestly, no,” he muttered, glancing at MJ but not being able to bring himself to be terrified by the piercing stare she was leveling at him. 

Next to him, Ned laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you just get a hall pass and meet us at lunch instead?”

Yes, that was what Peter needed. He needed some time to walk and clear his head. “A-are you sure? I can’t just leave you hanging here.”

“No worries, we’ll finish up this time.”

Peter smiled at his friend. “Thanks.” He stood up and spoke quickly to the teacher, who handed him the blue slip dismissively. Out in the hall, he leaned against the door and pressed his face into his hands. 

He’d gotten a B- on the assignment he had asked Stephen for help with. He’d literally never had a B in anything in his life, and it was an assignment worth at least 30% of his grade. If his grade dipped, he wouldn’t be in the running for valedictorian in when they started considering those things. He needed to maintain his GPA above 4.0, because most students here had at least that and this was a lot of pressure. He really wanted to be valedictorian. He could go to the school of his choice if he maintained perfect grades in this school.

Stephen could have cost him his valedictorian-ship.

And suddenly, Peter was beyond furious. _ How dare he? How dare he make me feel important and then just blow me off like my problems matter less than his— _

“PENIS PARKER!”

Peter actually growled. “Not now, Flash,” he muttered.

“If not now when, Benis Barker,” the other boy drawled, throwing an arm around Peter’s shoulders. Peter promptly shook it off and stalked toward the bathroom, fully intending to lock himself in one of the stalls and wait him out.

“Never, Eugene,” Peter said, smirking.

And then _ Eugene _ hauled off and punched him right on his cheek, sending him crashing into the locker.

Head ringing and the inside of his cheek split, Peter stared at him, dazed. “What the fuck, man?” he asked, bewildered.

“Never _ ever _ fucking call me my name. You’re puny and worthless. Nobody fucking likes you or your club of losers. You don’t deserve to even have the same letters in your name as mine. Or what? Do you think I couldn’t do some searching on you, too? You know my name, and I know all about you, _ Annie. _ I know how you got your parents killed and then got adopted and got them killed too. Nobody loves you, now. _ ” _

Peter saw red. He aimed for Flash’s knees when he went in for the tackle, and the boy fell to the ground, his head slamming into the laminate tile on the ground with a loud thud. Flash groaned, tears immediately springing to his eyes.

Peter calmly stood, not willing to be suspended for fighting, and walked away, toward the bathroom like was his original plan. “Leave me alone,” Peter said over his shoulder. “You might have parents but you’re still a complete jerk and nobody loves you either!”

“Fuck you!” Flash growled as he climbed to his feet. He left Peter be, though.

In the bathroom, Peter rinsed the blood out of his mouth and frowned. _ “Nobody loves you, now.” _The words rattled around in his head. Flash had to be wrong. There was a chance Christine did. She’d been around since he was a baby and she’d loved May. Once May and Ben took him in, he was always around her and she was always nice to him. And then there was Stephen. 

He was still pissed at Stephen. In true teenager fashion, he sent a long paragraph text, which was marked as ‘read’ but went unanswered:

_ It was really uncool of you to blow me off. I understand if you had something else to do, okay? But you didn’t have to be rude about it. I didn’t do anything wrong to you for you to be so mean to me. And I really needed your help. I also really like talking to you and being around you. You were supposed to be our friend, but Christine says you blow her off too. If you’re so worried about being useless, maybe you shouldn’t blow off the people that actually still need you for something other than your hands. _

He’d felt bad sending that and texted another message, which went unread.

_ I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not cool to throw your insecurities in your face. I still want you to get better. I’m sorry. _

_ Maybe it’s best if I take a break from hanging out with you anyway. This sucks. _

As he sat on the closed lid in the only stall, his phone finally dinged.

_ I’m sorry too, Peter. It’s for the best. _

Peter was furious again.

* * *

“Life without my work—”

“Is still life,” Christine interjected. They were standing in his living room, facing off. The windows behind Stephen showed only gray sky, deepening and turning blue-gray as night took hold. Christine thought it was fitting for his mood. “This isn’t the end! There are other things that can give your life meaning.”

Stephen scoffed, his bitterness suffocating Christine like poison. “Like what? You?”

Christine jerked as if she’d been slapped. “This is the part where you apologize.”

“This is the part where you leave.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, but she was furious. “And Peter?”

“I’m as useless to him now as I am to anyone else. I never wanted him to keep coming around anyway.” He scoffed. “And you? What did you think would happen? That the power of love would have us holding hands in a circle and singing kumbayah? You think _ Peter _cares about what happens to me now that I can’t indulge his fleeting curiosities? And you—we’re not friends, Christine. We were barely lovers.”

She felt her entire body go hot because Peter didn’t deserve to be the target of Stephen’s self-hatred. “Fine,” she hissed. “Don’t come near me or my _ son _ again. Don’t talk to us, don’t call us. And when you need help, don’t come looking for us.”

“Trust me, I won’t!”

“And when you find yourself too alone, remember that _ you _did this to Peter. Goodbye Stephen,” Christine said. Anything she might have felt for the man— compassion, love, friendship, attraction, willingness to help… all of that was snuffed out by his cruel words.

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t say he was sorry. He didn’t beg her back.

She knew what this was. He was imploding. Traumatized by his accident, humiliated and panicking for the loss of his career—she understood that part, he was one of the best neurosurgeons in the country until his hands and wrist were completely shattered in the car wreck—and depressed from lack of progress in his surgeries and therapies, he was pushing everything and everyone away.

She wasn’t going to be around to watch.

* * *

He attempted to call her once—he was asking about Peter, but she knew he was just spiraling. “He’s busy,” he answered, and hung up the phone.

Peter often asked about Stephen, when he could go visit, if he should bring something. The answer was always the same. “Not today, kiddo. I’m sorry.”

One day, Peter got frustrated. “I’m not stupid,” he snapped. “I know you fought with him. I know, okay? But you can’t stop me from seeing him, he needs me!”

“Peter…”

“Stop blowing me off and be honest about it! Why are you keeping me from seeing him?!”

“I’m not, Peter.”

“Yes you are!” he hissed. His fists curled—he was furious.

“He’s gone,” she blurted, defending herself from his anger.

He reeled back, dazed. “W-what? Why?!”

“Because he doesn’t want to see us anymore, Peter. He gave up.”

Peter staggered, sinking onto a chair nearby, at the breakfast bar. “W-what?”

Christine never wanted to tell him. She’d hoped she could just hold him off until he forgot all about the man. Now she knew she had to break his heart, and tears stung her eyes for what she was about to say. “He gave up on everything. On the surgeries, on his recovery. On us. He gave. Up.”

Peter didn’t say anything, but he went into his room and didn’t come out for a long time.

* * *

She got wind of the first attempt when she scrubbed out of an emergency surgery one day,

“Uh, Christine?” Lily, her head nurse and best friend, pulled her into the station toward her desk. “I thought you should know.”

“Know what?”

“It’s… Strange.”

“What’s strange?”

“No, Dr. Strange. He, um… he took a bunch of pills and vodka. He’s getting his stomach pumped now, and he’ll be admitted to psych for three days.”

Christine felt numb. “He…”

“He hasn’t come back for therapy in months. Hasn’t returned for occupational therapy.”

She nodded, a painful lump in her throat. “Okay,” she whispered.

There was another incident where he did the same, and it was her that had to treat him. He avoided her eyes the entire time, and neither spoke. When they were finally transferring him into the psych unit, she said, “You wouldn’t need to do this if you weren’t alone.”

He didn’t answer her.

* * *

The last time, it wasn’t that he went to the hospital, it was an email.

_ Christine, _

_ I owe you an apology and an enormous thank you. _

_ I never wanted to cause you stress or pain. You took care of me without asking for anything in return, and I spat in your face. I was cruel with what I said, and I wish more than anything that I could take those words back, but I can’t. I know that you don’t want to see me anymore because of that and that’s okay. You’re right to be hurt and angry. _

_ I’m writing to you because I’m not going to be around anymore. _

_ I know this might seem alarming, especially given other things I’ve done, but I promise, where I’m going, I’ll be okay. Still, this will be the last time you hear from me, so I just want to say that you’re a brilliant surgeon and an even better person, and that Peter’s heart is as big as his brain and he’ll go far in life, possibly farther than any of us had ever dreamed. I wish I could be there to see it. _

_ Please take care of yourself and please tell Peter that he is a good kid and that he was good for me. I think of him all the time and I will miss him very much. _

_ All my love and gratitude, _

_ Stephen _

He’d been vague in his email, but she read between the lines enough. Sometime in the future, news would break of Stephen Vincent Strange’s body found somewhere, the cause of death ruled to be self-inflicted. He was clear enough about that. She’d never see him again, neither would Peter. It seemed Peter was on his mind a lot, and she briefly considered responding and trying to convince him to at least reconsider, for Peter’s sake. She shook the notion away. When someone had given up on themselves so thoroughly, there wasn’t anyone on Earth that could convince them against it.

She didn’t cry. She deleted the email and resolved that she would guard Peter from this as long as she possibly could—he could never know that Stephen planned to take his life. She got dressed for her shift. She took the train, like she always did—she had to take the bus two stops to the F train, and from there she took the 4 train in to the hospital. It was about an hour, and she used that hour to cry and grieve. Then she pulled her hair up, took a deep breath, and got to work. After all, she hadn’t lost everyone. 

She still had Peter.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys, if you made it this far, thanks. Let me know what you're thinking, how you're feeling, what's going on, right below in the comments.
> 
> If you or someone you know are ever feeling the way Stephen is here, worthless, useless, and alone, I want you to know that you are none of those things. You're loved and important. I also want you to know that what Christine thought, although painful and understandable, is wrong. You haven't given up on yourself, and the people you love have not and will never give up on you. Please, please, for the sake of everyone you've ever cared about, find some help. there are resources almost everywhere, people waiting to help you. all you have to do is reach out.
> 
> Y'all rock<3  
Daisy


	9. nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Peter are on opposite sides of the world but are about to go through something pretty similar...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhh so this took super long, I am so sorry. I made a mistake w this chapter which ended with me having to outline and kinda write 4 chapters? the good news is that it's fixed and now the next chapters should be less difficult and come out a little faster.
> 
> Special thanks to FlyingFreeYT as always as well as ElisaPhoenix for pre-reading and stuff. you guys rock.
> 
> here we have TAO yeeting one crippled doctor to the top of the world and Peter... well, Ned has his priorities straight, let's just leave it at that.

**CHAPTER 9**

His first night in Kamar-Taj was plagued with nightmares. His begging in the street, shivering when night fell and sudden fear and terror that he would end up outside this door alone pushed him so far into panic that the man that helped him out of that mugging, Karl Mordo, had to practically drag him into a room.

“You should shower and rest,” he said, not unkindly, “until tomorrow morning when your classes begin.” When Stephen didn’t move, just stood there and shook, he frowned. “Do you need help?”

His hands were on fire and he felt like the entire Mt. Everest was literally sitting on his chest—

“Strange. Listen to me. You are inside now. You are safe.” Karl Mordo’s voice was so foreign and steady, and a little bit cold. It was enough to focus on so he could find his way back. Suddenly, he was so tired. It didn’t matter to his mind, which kept replaying instances of his father throwing him out into the snow and locking the door, or dragging him into his room to punish him for being alive.

When he got up, he felt like he hadn’t slept in months. The Ancient One took pity on him and gave him some rest meditations to read and practice, sending him to his room for the day. He fell asleep half-way through his second try. In the evening when dinner was served, The Ancient One invited him to tea after so that she could explain how things worked.

Amazed and more than a little bit dazzled, Stephen devoured as many books as he could get his bullshit excuse for hands on. He learned everything he could. The first thing he learned was how to project himself out of his body like The Ancient One had done. He was awake and asleep at the same time. It was surreal, seeing himself sleep.

Most of the time, he used this new ability to read even more. But sometimes… sometimes he let his soul carry him far away, back across the ocean. Back to New York. He saw when his watches were sold in an auction, which he’d instructed would be reinvested into his retirement accounts, with the exception of a generous amount that would go to an organization dedicated to raising awareness about driving while texting or otherwise distracted. His heart broke a little more in that moment. His worth was slowly being sold away. Nothing of who he once was remained.

He looked in on Peter sometimes, too. He was sad. Angry, even. Always lost. So many times, he wanted to reach out and soothe the boy out of his nightmares like he used to, but… his astral projecting wasn’t strong enough yet to break the dimensional wall. So he made himself sit there and listen to Peter wake up gasping or screaming, made himself watch as Peter dragged himself to the bathroom to vomit. He deserved the helplessness he felt. He punished himself with it.

When he was strong enough, he began to set out water along with his medication for nausea and anxiety, leaving them on the kitchen counter for the boy to find. He didn’t dare touch the boy, but he felt horribly guilty for leaving him the way he did. There were so many things he wished he could say. Instead, he just waited until he was asleep and then went back to his studying.

* * *

OsCorp was decidedly huge. The thing had to have at least five acres _ before even reaching the entrance _ of waterfalls, park benches, an outdoor cafe, and even trees and flowers, sectioned off by walkways made out of smooth stones. 

The entrance was opulent and their voices were carried away in its atrium, which reached up at leat fifteen stories and featured a steel glass waterfall that was taller than Ned wanted to think about, a koi pond also covered in glass that reached under their feet and fish that swam lazily, following after their foot steps.

Everything was white and glass, echo-y and monochromatic and the air even smelled like sterility and waterfall and strangely, flowers. Peter was stunned.“This is awesome!”

Peter was just as amazed, practically bouncing in his spot next to Ned. “I hope we get to see some of their projects instead of just boring lab things. And stupid OsCorp propaganda.”

“I mean yeah but even that would be awesome! This place is so cool!”

Their teachers went to the front desk and retrieved their badges, and then they all moved to a section of the atrium filled with white, modern benches and more glass waterfalls. “Alright, listen up! There are a lot of people here and we need this to go quickly. You need to stay quiet and come retrieve your badge when your name is called!” 

They started calling names in groups of four or five, in alphabetical order. Peter knew it was going to take a while before he was called, so he stood up and wandered around a little. He read the directory on the desk, located the elevators, even the cafes and restrooms. He saw the executive suites on floors 90-95, private residences in the 45th, 75th, and 83rd floors, and an observatory in the 105th floor which he knew from the permission slip they would get to visit at the end of their trip.

Excited and nervous, he ran back to Ned to ramble about his findings. “Oh, I don’t know if I want to go up there! It’s so high, it’s terrifying.”

“Oh my god, don’t chicken out! Don’t! You have to come!”

“Who’s bitching out?” MJ. She wandered over, sketchbook in hand to take notes and draw things with. It was her school sketch book, not her crisis sketchbook, which Peter learned with some level of confusion and fear that she used to draw people she observed to be in crisis. Basically, she stalked people in their darkest hour and drew them.

“Peter doesn’t want to see the observatory.”

“Way to throw me under the bus!”

MJ stared between them, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Fine,” Peter mumbled. “I’ll go, I’ll go. If I pass out, it’ll be your fault. Especially you, Ned!”

“What?”

“Parker! Peter. Come get your badge!” Peter walked over while they called out the other names left in his group, leaving Ned and MJ just standing there.

There were 50 kids from his grade on this field trip, so they ended up having to take the elevator in groups. Because a group of 50 genius teens and nerds is somehow even more confused than a group of 50 average people, it took them twenty minutes and several elevator trips and lost students. Even one of the lab assistants from upstairs had to come down and escort Flash back to his group.

That was why the lab assistant didn’t notice that one of his projects had escaped its container, scampering toward the ceiling.

* * *

He was hitting a wall. Studying night and day meant he read almost everything in the library at least once. He knew spell after spell for everything from dimensional travel to healing to turning people into animals and vice versa (whoa, he didn’t know those spells actually existed—he thought they were something that belonged in childrens’ films. Alas, all tall tale had a kernel of truth, he supposed, although he shuddered to wonder who were the unlucky bastards that ended up being the princess and the frog). There were curses and things that dealt with time, and things that dealt with communication with beings from other realms. 

He could not reproduce even one of those spells. He was starting to become stressed—if he couldn’t perform, he’d fail. He’d have to leave this place and he had nowhere else to go. He’d burned all the bridges he had left in his home city, and he didn’t want to go back to nothingness. 

His breaths came short. The book in his hand slipped from his aching fingers. He gasped and groaned as he doubled over onto his bed. It was The Ancient One that helped him come too. His mind was trapped in absolute terror of failing, of what was waiting for him if he did. He sobbed. _ “I’m so tired,” _ he begged. _ “I’m tired of being afraid of him—please, please just make it stop— _”

“Tell me who, Stephen.”

Stephen swallowed. “My father.”

The Ancient One nodded. Her hand landed gently on his back. She sat in silence for a long time, waiting for his breathing to even out. When it finally did, she said, “Come with me.”

Stephen stood up and followed her without question. “Are you going to teach me something new?”

She laughed. “Is there something? Or have you read it all?”

“Almost,” Stephen answered bashfully. He followed her into the east meditation garden. “The only way to stop being afraid, Stephen, is to face what you fear.”

“I did,” he said evenly. “I told them what happened the second I left for college. Pressed charges, fucked off. My father went to prison for what he did to me.”

“Then why are you still afraid?”

Stephen didn’t have an answer for that.

“Is it your father that you still fear? Or is it the fears that he instilled in you? Fear of failure. Fear of falling short. Fear of being _ worthless. _” She opened a portal and walked through, leaving Stephen no choice but to follow. When he looked around, he was at the top of the tallest mountain in the world. “This is cheating,” he joked. “We just… open dimensional portals to the very top of Mt. Everest, now? What about all the people who pay thousands of dollars to hike up here and freeze to death?”

She didn’t laugh. “They do not know they could open a dimensional portal and simply take a step.”

“Fair enough.”

“Today, we’re going to face your fear.” She handed him a sling ring. “The average person will survive in this cold for thirty minutes before they cannot regulate their temperature. Blood stops flowing to their limbs, causing them to lose some of their motor functions. Their organs slowly fail while they descend into insanity. Eventually, they do not know the difference between cold and warmth, and they fall into the sleep of death. She looked into his eyes and said, “here is what you fear the most: you will portal yourself back to Kamar-Taj. If you succeed, you’ll prove yourself to me, and I will have tea with you and discuss your placement in the Order. If you do not succeed—if you fail… you will die. Your death will be slow and full of pain and fear. Your punishment for your failure will be your own demise. Can you get yourself back home? Or will you lose yourself over this?” She turned around and walked away, leaving him gaping at her in shock. “Your only way to survive, Stephen, will be to find each of those lies your father told you within yourself and defeat them. Good luck.” She closed the portal with a flick of her wrist, vanishing in a shower of sparks.

His only hope to get home vanished with her.

* * *

This room was eerie.

“This place is awesome!” Ned hissed in his ear. “Oh my god. There are real scientists doing real science things—”

“It’s giving me the creeps. Look I like science and everything as much as the next guy but I think experimenting on live animals is—”

“Yeah that’s true. But look, they’ve got a whole room full of like a thousand kinds of spiders over there.”

“Seriously? What experiments could they possibly be doing with spiders?”

That devolved into an excited discussion about genetically modifying them to produce different types of spider silks for commercial use and spider venoms for biological weapons, and the biology of spiders in general as they walked toward the room. "Do you really think they'd make some sort of super-venom for the military?"

"Ned, everything has military applications in science. Anything good could be turned into a weapon in the wrong hands, or in the hands with the most money. Ask Tony Stark."

"W-what? What does Tony Stark have to do with this?"

"Oh, come on. He's super rich because of his government contracts building weapons, and then all of a sudden he gets kidnapped _in __Afghanistan_ and comes back ready to shut down his entire weapons department and become a superhero instead? Super awesome, but also what do you think happened out there? My guess is that they figured they'd try to turn him on the US, or they tried to make him build something for the black market."

"Dude, that's so dark."

"I'm just saying. If it could happen to _the _Tony Stark, it could happen to anyone and any corporation, even a huge one like this."

Ned was right. There were glass terrariums everywhere, and all of them were occupied by at least one arachnid. Peter carefully read the notes on each one, pleased to find that he was right—certain species were being cross-bred and modified to produce certain qualities, from web strength and durability to spiders as biological weapons—amplifying their poisons, giving more power to their bites, their ability to spit it, and more.

The latter made Peter shudder. No, OSCORP might be on the cutting edge of biotechnology, but the cost was too high for Peter to be on board with this. There was a reason he preferred robotics.

“Uh—Peter?” Ned’s voice was high and thin, and when he turned, startled, to stare at him in confusion, he pointed at Peter. “Oh God, Pete—it’s on you, oh God.”

And then he looked down and one of the fucking things was running up his arm as fast as it could go. It had a relatively tiny body but its legspan was as big as Peter’s hand and he just wanted the thing to stop fucking moving.

Peter froze. “N-Ned get it off. Oh my God.”

“H-help!” Ned yelped. “HELP! Oh god it’s gonna eat my best friend—”

“Shut up! Stop it!” Panic was building in Peter’s blood like acid, burning his lungs, his airways, his eyesight, his brain. “Shit. Ned please, please just find it and get it off. NED! Where are you going don’t fucking leave me here—”

“I’m not touching it! I don’t want to die! I’m getting someone with gloves!” 

“NED! C’mon, man—”

“IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU! I WANT TO LIVE!” And Ned turned and ran.

“NED! Dammit,” Peter cursed. He could feel its weight on the back of his shirt and he wheezed. “Alright, bud. Let’s get you back in your—wherever you came from. I don’t care, but just not on me.” He slowly reached behind him and pulled his shirt away from his back, trying to inhale through his nose and exhale through his mouth.

The spider didn’t seem to appreciate that. It actually hissed and then it lunged for his thumb, sinking its tiny, venomous teeth right into the tiny piece of skin between his thumb and forefinger. Peter yanked his hand back and tried harder not to panic. _ It bit him it fucking bit him! What if he died Or started laying eggs or growing extra body par— _

“Peter? The guy is here! Are you alive? Peter!”

Pale and sweating, Peter turned around and grunted, “just—get it off my back.”

He didn’t notice the blood on his hand, but thankfully, neither did anyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually had a blast writing the bite. it was fun.
> 
> let me know what you guys think and what you'd like to see next. I look forward to hearing from you! Your comments fuel meeeee
> 
> y'all rock!  
<3Daisy


	10. ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is sick; Stephen meets Cloak and gets promoted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow it's been a hot minute. I wish I could tell you I'm going to get better at updating regularly, but honestly, I'm probably not. my life is kind of overwhelming and it leads to things like writer's block and just general not having time, and also making a major error and having to fix a bunch of stuff. good news is that means I have bare bones for like a few chapters and might be able to get things done quickly. no promises I'm a fucking flake lmfao
> 
> I got around the writer's block with a couple other short things I've posted in the mean time, and that really helped so check out the rest of my works to see what I've been up to! the other stuff, well, idk. wish me luck, I guess, and thanks for sticking around and waiting so patiently.
> 
> Anyways, thanks to Elisa for reading for me, caught a couple of oopsies for me and helped this read a little better. still, if you see something, say something! nothing here is set in stone.
> 
> enjoy the ride, I guess~

**CHAPTER 10**

By the time Peter got home, he was stumbling. He tripped twice on the steps and vomited once outside the door of his apartment. 

“A-aunty,” he gasped. “Aunty Christine—”

“Oh my God. Oh my God! What happened to you?!”

He couldn’t answer. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the bathroom, so he stumbled to the trashcan and heaved. 

Once Christine realized what was happening, she was surprisingly calm. She pushed him into the bathroom and let him lean over the toilet, slipping on gloves and moving to wipe up his mess and take out the garbage. When she returned, she changed her gloves and took his temperature, blood pressure, pulse oxygen, and even blood sugar. His temperature made her eyes widen, and he was bordering tachycardic—probably from the pain and the vomiting and the 105.8F fever.

“Peter, we have to go to the hospital.”

“I-no, Aunty please—”

“Peter!”

“I don’t wanna go there, I don’t want to.” The panic in his voice made her pause. 

“Are you… afraid of it? Oh honey, why? You used to hang out there all the time!”

“Y-yeah but I w—” he had to stop so that he could heave again. “I wasn’t sick. I don’t wanna die, I don’t want to go.”

Tears sprung to Christine’s eyes. “Oh, Peter…”

“Aunty, please.” He wrapped himself around her middle, desperate tears making his face even more discolored. He pressed his face against her stomach and sobbed. “I don’t want to go. I don’t wanna be like May and Ben. Please, Aunty, _ please _.”

Christine’s chest clenched.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Shh. It’s alright. We’re gonna have to get your fever down here, and I have a feeling you won’t keep much down. Can you stay right here for me?”

He nodded, leaning limply against the sink.

“It’s going to be okay, Peter. Look at me.”

His eyes were still wet with tears and glazed with fever as they met hers.

“You’re not going to die. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay, Peter, but—”

“D’you promise?”

Christine’s face pinched in an expression of something like sympathy. “I promise, but your fever is very high and we have to lower it. I’m going to fill the tub in my room for you, okay? It’ll be cool water and you’ll be able rest in it once you’re done.”

He nodded.

Christine returned twenty minutes later and helped him strip out of his dirty clothes and stumble into the bath.

“It’s cold,” Peter whimpered.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” she soothed. “I have to get your fever down and cold towels aren’t gonna cut it.”

“’s too cold. I don’ like it.”

She sighed. “It’s not as cold in the hospital.”

“N-no! I don’ wanna die Aunty Christinnee—”

“Okay. Okay, that’s okay. You just sit right here then.”

“Kay. No hosp’tals.”

“Okay, Peter. I love you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, sweetheart.”

Peter shivered until he fell asleep.

In the morning, he woke up in Christine’s bed, wearing new boxer briefs and still shivering, but at least he wasn’t puking anymore. His mouth was dry and the whole world tilted when he turned his head to glance at the clock. He groaned. 

“Peter? Are you up, sweetie?”

“Aunty Christine?” he rasped.

She set down three huge bottles of Smart Water on the night stand and handed him some pills. “These will probably put you to sleep, but they’re for nausea, so you can keep down that water. Drink as much of it as you can, okay? In small sips. I’m making something light for you to eat.”

“O-okay. Thanks,” he whispered.

He ate his soup dutifully and sipped his water. When he got up to pee a few minutes later, his… his blanket was stuck to his hand? Confused, he tried to shake it off, but more of it just stuck to his forearm. His other hand instinctively reached to try to rip it off, but then it was stuck too. Panicking, Peter tried to get the damn blanket off, but he only ended up tripping on it and landing in a heap on the rug next to the bed, groaning pitifully as the world spun.

Christine rushed in and helped him untangle himself, helping him to the bathroom. When he finished and opened the door, he looked so confused and miserable, that she couldn’t help but pull him into her arms. “You’ll be alright,” she murmured.

Peter just tried to keep his hands from sticking to her shirt or her hair until he managed to get back into bed. When she left, the door clicking shut behind her sounded like a gunshot. The gunshot reminded him of others, the kind that killed his aunt and uncle, and suddenly, there was a flood of sound—sirens in the distance, his own breathing, the building settling, everything, and it all sounded like gunshots. His ears rung until he was gasping, covering them desperately to stop the pain. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to breathe, but all he could do was panic.

His skull felt like it was going to explode and even his breaths hurt because the sound was like spraying water onto his ear drums from a firehose. His skin was _ crawling. _ He wanted to be off this bed, but he didn’t want to get up. Everything touching him was too much. Everything he heard was too much—his heart beat sounded like a thousand of them and that was probably true because suddenly, he could hear every voice on the street below, the sirens in the distance, the kid screeching three floors down. _ “Please… please make it stop,” _he whispered, sobbing. He covered his ears. His sobs hurt, so he tried to suppress them. The attempt made the pressure in his head worse.

Whimpering miserably, he curled in on himself until the overwhelming sensations faded and he could sleep.

* * *

The Ancient One was ready with tea when he fell through his portal, gasping. She led him inside and helped warm his hands with a spell, and then she soothed him out of panic, which took surprisingly less time. He did what she said to do. He spent the first two minutes enjoying the view from the top of the world, slowly inhaling and exhaling painfully cold and thin air. With each inhale he made himself think. 

He tried the portal once, twice, three times. His fingers sparked, but nothing happened. His father was ready to start screeching in his ears again, _ “Failure! You’re worthless! It would be better if you died instead of her!” _He considered, however briefly, whether or not letting himself die was a good idea. He decided against it. He refused to prove that asshole right, anyway.

His mind flashed through more memories, painful, terrifying ones, but he forced himself to edge away from the abyss of panic, knowing that if he fell in, he would likely die.

His hands hurt until his eyes watered, but he kept trying. _ Worthless! _ His father screeched in his ears. He shook his head. “I’m not worthless. I can be useful here.” _ You’re a shit son and a shit brother. You’re shit. _ “I’m good,” he told himself, even though his voice wobbled. “I didn’t deserve the things he said. I’m good.” He’d _ loved _Donna. He was a good brother. He was.

One by one, he forced himself to counter all of the horrible things his father said to him, did to him, until he was screaming into the wind, “_ I’m not horrible! I’m not like you! I will be somebody!” _

Except, that last thought was the one that had driven him through medical school, the thought that has pushed his pride to greater and greater heights until he could ignore the scared little boy that trembled in his room, waiting to be beaten and called a failure, until nobody else saw that child, only the relentless, egotistical doctor that consistently made himself the best at everything.

He said instead, “I’m not who you said I am. I am somebody, and I’m not going to die without finding out who that is.” When the sparks returned to his fingers, they didn’t fade. With a yell of triumph, he gestured the portal open, focusing all of his remaining mental energy on getting back to Kamar-Taj.

And when he did, and he could finally hear something other than his father’s words and beatings echoing in his ears, he realized that the portal was open, and on the other side was an expectant Ancient One, alongside Karl Mordo who looked worried and relieved. He landed on his face in the court yard, and then curled in around his hands, which legitimately were making him sob. The Ancient One simply guided him into the warmth of his suite.

After that, it had been easy. He read everything in the library _ again, _ this time practicing (which was very against the no magic in the library rule) but he didn’t care. He felt excited about learning again, in the way he hadn’t felt since his first year of residency. He read collection after collection, absorbing everything and analyzing it carefully. He took notes, constantly asked questions (which was mildly annoying to the other Masters, particularly Wong), and made mental lists of all the dimensions he had read about, the energies that he could conjure and what powers they gave. 

He was increasingly concerned about what he read—some dimensions were literal hell dimensions, and their powers were offensive and weaponized. Others, like The Ancient One had explained what felt like years ago but was only months, were benevolent and offered healing powers, extra-sensory perception abilities, and even time and space travel abilities. He honestly preferred to focus himself on those.

Temptation overcame him to look at the ancient one’s private collection, the one that—he cringed—the previous librarian had been beheaded over. What he found in those books made Aladdin’s song about a whole new world seem like it was created by a preschooler.

This was the key to the entire universe. He could _ feel _it. It was reaching out for him. He ignored everything that told him this was a bad idea, and he reached back.

_ Time. _ It was the book he’d asked Wong about, the one called _ The Book of Cagliostro. _Seeing it, he was anxious about taking it down, much less trying to take it to his room. He sat to read it at a desk instead. The wealth of knowledge in it was almost incomprehensible: the ability to freeze, reverse, and forward time, almost literally the pause and rewind buttons of the universe.

Trying his hand at it was a no-brainer. He took the relic from its stand and used it to read the pages that had been torn away. “_ Dormammu,” _ he discovered. Another hell dimension, he supposed, except this one was called the Dark Dimension. Its powers included the ability to extend one’s life, bend matter and reality at will both offensively and defensively, and… _ oh, shit. _

Kaecilius had stolen rituals that allowed him to bring the dark dimension into their reality.

* * *

Kaecillius brought with him the chaos the others had been concerned about, but on the bright side, he finally met his relic.

It happened because the Zealot had accidentally blasted him into what he later realized was the New York Sanctum. As he explored, it was sort of strange (har har) that the thing seemed to be watching him. It had been perfectly still until he walked in, and then it seemed to be turning to follow his movements. He approached the glass case it was in carefully. It mirrored his movements curiously as he studied its fabric and lining. It was thick and heavy, and he could feel the ghost of it covering his shoulders, its soft fabric curling around him and warming him.

_ Whoa _.

He edged away from it, confused at feeling so connected to an object. It was different than the connection he’d felt to his cars and his watches, and his house and his penthouses. Those were his because he worked for them, because he earned the pleasure of owning them. They existed so that everyone else would know that he’s better than them. When his skills vanished, so did his possessions. 

This was vastly different. The cape—holy shit, was it really a cape?—seemed to be connected to the parts of him he didn’t show: the way his mind worked, the empty spaces inside of him that he preferred not to think about. The _ magic _he carried. He wasn’t surprised when it defended him against Kaecillius. In fact, he was relieved he wasn’t going crazy.

The other good thing that came of this attack was that he got to see Christine. Granted, he’d been stabbed basically in the heart and was actively bleeding to death, which wasn’t conducive to a proper conversation. Also, the zealot he’d tossed into the forest through the Windows Screensaver Portals, and the one that had stabbed him, had projected himself into the hospital since the fancy new Magic Cape was trying to suffocate him in the hallway. Killing the zealot certainly made everything more complicated. It was the first time he accepted that he would never be a doctor again, if he was honest. His life went from having his fingers in people’s brains or spines to using a defibrilator to murder someone who was trying to hand the planet over to hell, wrapped and with a bow. Yeah. Who he was not was definitely not who he used to be. That changed things with Christine too.

“A-after all this time, you just… show up here? Flying out of your body?”

“Yeah, I know,” he commiserated lamely.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I’m sorry about that,” he said sincerely. “I… I swear I won’t do that again.”

She nodded, and there were tears in her eyes. “What are you going to do now?”

“Save the world I guess,” he said with a wink. Then he tried to stand up. 

“S-stephen what are you doing?!”

He grunted as his chest burned, but thankfully, Christine had done the superb job she normally did, and some of the healing spells he read he could do himself and would keep him from accidentally reopening anything. When he could stand, he asked, “how’s Peter?”

Her face dropped, her eyes shuttering into a cooly neutral stare. “Fine without you,” she answered flatly.

He nodded. “I know you told me to stay away, but… one day, I’d like to apologize to him in person. He… deserves an explanation.”

“Yes he does,” she answered with the same cool, flat tone. Then she sighed. “I… will tell him I saw you.”

“Thank you.” They started down the hall together, Christine supporting his weight for a bit while he got his bearings.

“This is insane,” she muttered. “Where are you going? Uh—can you tell me the truth?”

“Well,” he sighed, “a powerful sorcerer gave himself over to an ancient—entity, I guess?—can bend the laws of physics, tried very hard to kill me. But I left him chained up in Greenwich Village, and the quickest way to get back there is through a dimensional gateway I opened in the mop closet. Uh—don’t tell anyone I just said that.”

She looked up at him and snorted.

When he returned to the Sanctum, Mordo and the Ancient One were waiting for him. That was when he learned that his Magic Flying Cape was actually called the Cloak of Levitation. He refused to call it that or Magic Flying Cape like a disney movie, so he started referring to it internally as just Cloak, captital ‘C’ Cloak. He also learned his new title, one that confirmed that he was definitely never going to be a doctor again.

_ Master _Strange. Holy fuck. He killed someone—granted, he was angry evil-dimension zealot—and he was being rewarded with a promotion? 

This was not how things were supposed to go.


	11. eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen and Peter make important decisions: Stephen vows to use his new powers to serve the people he loves, and Peter realizes he can use his new powers to keep others from getting hurt and faces down one of his worst triggers.

And just like that, they were back. He’d been Master Thanks-for-killing-that-guy Strange for all of five minutes, which he’d spent letting The Ancient One know he knew how she stayed alive by using magic from the dark dimension and then arguing with Mordo about it and being told he lacked a spine.

That was a consideration. He spent his entire adult life operating on spines, and that was mostly to cover the fact that he probably lacked one of his own. He was still right about Mordo, though. The guy lacked imagination.

Even still, he was going to have to find a way to work with the man and keep him and probably Earth alive, so when the zealots returned, he ran after Mordo and did his best to keep up with what the fuck was happening, like, for example, Kaecillius casually _ fracturing reality _ and turning New York City into one enormous living kaleidoscope.

Then she was there. The Ancient One finally claimed her Dormammu powers and followed them into the Mirror Dimension which was currently fracturing and refracturing itself into maze of subways and streets and sky and buildings until Stephen found himself with a zealot’s hands wrapped around his throat and she was the one separating them.

She fought elegantly and cleanly, and Stephen could only watch the true Master at work as she took them on and continuously fought them back. Kaecillius though, he fought dirty. The bastard stabbed his own guy through and through so he could drive his awful, icy mirror sword thing into her—probably her liver, if he was honest. And then he kicked her through a portal, where she fell 60 stories to her death.

He tried for his normal life again one last time that day. He scrubbed in, pulled gloves over his scarred hands, picked up a scalpel. His hands were trembling so violently that he had to set it down so he wouldnt cut himself. _ He couldn’t help her. _ So he handed the scalpel over to fucking _ Nic, _watched them operate, trying to remedy the bleeding in her brain, her insides, fix everything that shattered when she fell. They couldn’t. Even Christine couldn’t, brilliant surgeon though she was.

The Ancient One accepted death rather peacefully. He felt the unnatural chill, felt how the world seemed to shift and darken just for a fraction of a second. Saw how her heart monitor _ glitched. _He projected himself away and followed her to the window, where the weather had turned and it was thundering.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a panic, “Come on, where are you going?” He floated to her, watching her face for a moment. Then he said, “you have to return to your body. You don’t have much time.”

“Time is relative,” she said serenely, already looking out the window. “Your body hasn’t even hit the floor yet.” Through the window, lightning illuminated the night sky, creeping unnaturally slowly across the city sky. “I spent so many years,” she whispered, “peering through time, looking at this exact moment. I’ve prevented _ countless _terrible futures. And after one, there’s always another.” She seemed to be pleading for understanding. 

Stephen just listened. Sometimes, dying people just wanted to be heard. 

“And they all lead here, but never further.”

“You think this is where you die.” It wasn’t a question. He was stating what they both already knew. This was the end of the line for The Ancient One.

“You wonder what I see in your future?” she asked after a moment.

“No,” Stephen answered instinctively. He had the grace to look embarrassed when she shot him a knowing look. “Yes,” he tried again.

“I never saw your future,” she said, watching the snow fall. “Only its possibilities.” She turned to him. “Will you make me a promise?”

Stephen swallowed and nodded.

“Seek out the ones you’ve hurt and make peace with them. Some day, you will see the future only to a certain point, and no further. And when you look at your past, the possibilities you wish you could have seen will be as vast as the possibilities for the future you will know you cannot have.”

Stephen swallowed the lump in his throat. _ Peter. Christine. _He felt empty without them. Yes, it had stung to lose his things. But to lose his people? It had been what had driven him to suicide. He recognized that a lot of that was his own fault and that he needed to fix it.

So he said, “I swear.” And she smiled at him. “You have such a capacity for goodness,” she said. “You’ve always excelled—but not because you craved success, but because of you fear of failure.”

“It’s what made me a great doctor,” Stephen supposed.

“It’s precisely what kept you from greatness.” He thought of his father shrieking in his ears on Mount Everest. Hmm. He hadn’t changed his mentality as much as he thought after all. “Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.” 

“Which is?”

She turned to him. “It’s not about you,” she whispered. “The _ abuse _ wasn’t about you. The need to succeed as a doctor, that’s not about you. The need to succeed now as a sorcerer, it’s not about you.” She looked back outside again, the lightning illuminating her face. “When you first came to me, you asked me how I healed Jonathan Pangborn. I didn’t. He channels dimensional energy directly into his own body.”

“…He uses magic to walk?”

“Constantly. He had a choice: to return to his own life, or to serve something greater than himself.”

“So—so I could have my hands back? My old life?” _ My friends, my things… _he didn’t want any of it anymore. He wanted to use magic to keep New York safe, to keep the world safe for the people that had been with him when his existence was falling apart. 

“You could,” she said, “and the world would be all the lesser for it.” She saw the tears in his eyes and said, “swear to me that you will try. Please.”

He would. He would set himself and what was left of his dreams aside. He would stop panicking over this and throw himself into it. Most of all, he wouldn’t—he _ couldn’t— _ let Dormammu have Peter. He didn’t know if he could serve the world, but he could definitely serve _ them. _Christine and Peter. His family. 

“I swear.” Stephen felt his eyes filling with tears—he didn’t know they could burn in this state, but he finally understood. “Thank you,” he said. “I just… thank you.”

She let go.

* * *

Peter could see better than he ever had in his life. 

That was the first thing he noticed. He could see the chips of paint on the ceiling, count the peach fuzz on Christine’s face hair for hair, see the individual flecks of gold and red and brown that made up the color of her irises. He could see the texture of the paper in his textbooks.

School was ending, thank God. Christine had talked to him about maybe going on vacation or a road trip, getting much needed distance from probably the worst freshman year in history. He told her he’d think about it.

In the mean time, he listened to 3 lectures at the same time—his current Spanish lecture, Chemistry which was downstairs and _ much _more interesting, and French across the hall and played with sticking his pencil to his fingers.

After school, he ducked out of the building before Ned could catch up and decided he would sit on the roof of Christine’s building and figure out just what the fuck was happening to him. His fingers stuck to the roof top door, which mean that the thing slammed on his hand, causing him to screech in pain. Worse, he had to wriggle the door back and forth a bit before it released and freed his hand. Once he managed to get himself unstuck, he cradled his injured hand and walked toward the ledge of the roof, sitting in front of it and sniffling as he checked his hand. It was throbbing and bleeding on one knuckle and part of his palm. “Oww,” he mumbled, wincing as he applied pressure to the cuts. Big tears rolled from his eyes, splashing onto his injured skin. 

After a few minutes, he pulled his fingers away and stared at his hand in shock. The beginnings of what were probably going to be gnarly bruises and swelling were actually fading before his eyes. The cuts that had bled over his fingers seemed to have completely vanished. He only knew he wasn’t insane because there was still blood between his fingers and caked onto his injured hand. Experimentally, he pulled his fingers toward each other, crossed them, curled them into a fist, flexed his hand.

“W-what?” he whispered. His heart was pounding. “How is this possible?” 

Deciding against trying to hurt himself again, he decided to figure out what else he could do. He knew he could make things stick to him, he knew that his cuts and bruises could disappear as if by magic. He knew that he could see and hear too well. But he needed to know more. His inner science nerd kicked in and he devised a series of experiments to determine if certain things about him had improved—did increassed hearing mean he’d undergone a physiological change in his hear? Did it affect his balance, spatial reasoning, etc? Just how sticky was he? Did his other physical attributes also increase? He spent hours on the roof, testing his limits. 

He came to the conlusion that there were very little. 

The next morning, Peter felt exhilirated. His best friend noticed immediately.

“What’s going on with you? You were sick last week after the trip and now—”

“I don’t know. The last day of school is in two weeks? I’m happy. Glad this year is over. Hey, Christine said you could come over today, we should study.”

“Yes! Can we start that puzzle?!”

“Oh my God, yes. You have to show me it!” Peter was excited at the challenge. The puzzle was huge, 1,000 pieces. The chalenge was, no one piece contained the same color or continuations of any patterns. It was just a range of hues, and none of them were the same. They chatted as they made their way to the subway, Ned puffing to keep up with Peter’s considerably faster pace. “Wait,” he wheezed. “Hold on—you’re walking so fast, why are you walking so fast? Oh God—”

“This is literally my normal pace!”

“Did you suddenly get cheetah powers overnight?”

Peter couldn’t help his snort.

As they made it to the crosswalk, Peter glanced around, clearing his throat. His friend pushed into the street as soon as the crossing signal turned, but he felt himself hesitate. Unease was pressing on him so much, he struggled on his next inhale. 

“Now who’s being slow?” Ned teased, successfully reaching the sidewalk. Peter swallowed thickly. 

“Uh, hey, I—” unable to articulate the hair-raising sensation making him cringe, he took Ned’s arm and pulled him into the coffee shop around the corner _ and past the subway entrance. _Only then did he find himself able to breathe.

“Dude, what the heck? Why are we in here? We’re going to be late and I _ don’t _want to get in trouble, my mom will kill me! Peter! Did you just—”

Peter grabbed his arm again, yanking Ned onto the ground and shoving him under a table and pushing under it after him.

“Peter—”

To say it was a _ kaboom _ would have been mild. The building shook, his chest shook, his ears were unable to withstand the shockwave and Peter wasn’t even sure he heard the explosion. He just did his best to cover Ned’s body from damage worse than a few cuts from glass.

They crawled out from under the table and stumbled to their feet, their ears ringing so loudly, they could barely hear each other. Outside, _ fire _was shooting up from holes in the street and sidewalk. “N-Ned?” His own voice sounded distant in comparison to the ringing.

“…eterohmygod!” his voice was shrill and full of panic.

“N-Ned? Are you hurt?”

Ned shook his head, his hands gesturing wildly, tears coursing down his cheeks and causing shiny streaks to appear in the dust on his face. Peter could tell he was speaking, but it all sounded underwater and warped. 

“Ned?!” Peter pressed his hands over his ears, but it didn’t stop the ringing. “N-Ned, I…”

“PETER THE AMBULANCE IS HERE! PETER PLEASE ARE YOU HURT?”

“F-fine, I’m… Ned, are you hurt?”

“No I’m okay,” Ned said, shaking a little. 

“Do you know what happened?”

“The firemen are here! They’re saying the subway is compromised! There was some kind of fire, it blew up all the manholes in this corner.”

“But—h-home, I hae to go home. Christine…”

“She’s here, she was calling you and she heard the explosion. She’s here, Peter.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s going to be fine if you are, Peter.”

“Okay.”

* * *

“Aunty Christine!” Peter yelled at the top of his lungs, flinging himself into her arms.

“Peter!” She held him tightly, not caring that he almost knocked her over. The hug was over in an instant before she frantically looked him over. “Oh, my God. Peter, are you alright, sweetheart? Are you hurt?!”

“Just—s-some glass, and… my ears are ringing…”

“Okay, sweetie, sit right here and I’ll have someone look you over and get you home, okay? You’re so dusty,” she finished, wrinkling her nose as she guided him into a seat.

In that moment, she was so much like May that Peter’s eyes welled up in tears again. He wrapped his arms around her middle as he leaned on her stomach, and he cried.

He didn’t let go when Lily came to check him over, sniffling over and over as she wiped dust and grime away from the little scratches that still remained and then checked his ears. “Aunty?” he whispered.

“Peter?”

“S-something happened to me… it was like I could feel the explosion coming.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just… we were crossing the street and suddenly I just knew we had to leave from there. So we did. We missed our train and went into the coffee shop instead. Ned was mad at me at first, but…”

Christine frowned. “How did you know?”

“I don’t know.”

At night, after he’d showered and called Ned again to check on him, and answered all the text messages from his friends (and Liz, who was very sweet in her concern and made Peter blush pathetically) he went over the occurance from that morning.

How had he known to move? Maybe it was a sign of a different power of his, one he hadn’t discovered yet. He went up to the roof to think, and to play around with his new abilities again. He sat on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling over the side. He was surprised to find he wasn’t afraid of the height. In fact, it felt sort of freeing.

From here, he could see that the scene of the explosion was still covered in trucks and flashing lights and news crews, but the opposite direction, where Delmar’s was, was clear. 

He hadn’t been able to walk into Delmar’s without being triggered in months. He wondered if maybe he could feel safe, now. After all, his strange premonition had kept him out of danger. If it was a power that he had, he would be able to sense if something bad was going to happen.

_ And if not? _

_ Then I’ll get to be with Ben and May. _

It seemed like a solid plan. He decided against bringing Ned—he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Ned. But he had missed Mr. Delmar. He saw the man at Ben and May’s funeral, probably. Most of that day was a blur he would rather forget, but Ben knew Mr. Delmar since they were teenagers and the man had opened up the small sandwich shop and bodega before Peter was even born.

The store front wrapped around the corner. Anxious and more than a little bit triggered, he stepped in, wincing at the jingling of the bell strung to the door.

“Is that you, Mister Parker?! Oh man. I haven’t seen you in months!”

“H-hey, Mr. Delmar.”

“Tell me what you want, kid, on the house.”

“No no no, Mr. Delmar, you don’t have to do that.”

“Please, you are my favorite customer.”

“I am? Or my aunt?” Peter teased.

Mr. Delmar didn’t laugh. “Your Aunt, god rest her soul.”

Peter swallowed. “Thanks, Mr. Delmar,” he whispered.

“Gummy worms or cookies today?”

“Cookies, please.”

_ “Pasame una’ galleta’ de ahi rapido,” _ he called into the back. _ “No me le de galleta quema’ al muchacho oi’te? E’te e’ de nosotro’.” _

The nerves in Peter’s entire body flared. He tried to focus through it and hear. There was a man in the back of the store, presumably getting cookies. And he could hear the footsteps crunching on glass and alley dirt—a man approaching the rear door of the deli.

He lept over the counter and shoved Mr. Delmar behind a stack of boxes and then ran through the back without stopping.

The robber had already breached the door and was about to grab the person packing his cookies by the throat, but Peter charged across the room, shoving him through the door. The gun flew out of his hand and at the cookie guy’s feet, who slowly picked it up and aimed, firing over their heads.

Peter got to his feet and shoved the man away, and the man struggled to his knees and kept his hands raised and his eyes squeezed shut from looking down the barrel of his own gun until the police came.

Delmar rounded the corner and pulled him into a tight hug. “Are you alright?” he asked.

Peter considered. He’d been panicking a little when he walked in to the store—he hadn’t even been in one since Dr. Strange was still around. This time instead of screaming in a pool of blood, he _ stopped _it.

Inexplicably, triumph made his ears ring. He discovered a new ability, he faced his fear, and he saved Mr. Delmar from something awful. He did all of that. On his own. “I’m okay,” he said, his voice shaking. “I stopped him. They can’t take away anyone else.” 

That thought rung in his ears all the way home. _ They can’t take away anyone else. They can’t take away anyone else. They can’t take away anyone else. _

_ I won’t let them. _

_ I’ll find them. And I’ll stop them. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation: "Pasame una’ galleta’ de ahi rapido. No me le de galleta quema’ al muchacho oi’te? E’te e’ de nosotro’.” "Hand me some cookies here real quick. Don't give the kid any burned ones, you hear? he's one of us."
> 
> hey thanks for sticking around and being patient. Hope you liked the chapter. There was no beta this time around so any errors you find, feel free to point them out in the comments. nothing's written in stone :D
> 
> y'all rock  
<3Daisy


	12. twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter starts spider-man-ing.  
Tony is in the weird part of the internet again...  
Tony sticks his nose all up in Peter's business

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, welcome to a new installment of "is this an iron strange fic or nah: the Peter's two dads edition" where we're finally getting into civil war and homecoming. this feels a little weird, this chapter, so feel free to nag me about stuff you wish you could have seen or things you don't get. Let me know how I did in the comments. other than that, enjoy the ride.

Peter didn’t realize he’d be so tired all the time—tired and hungry. He figured out pretty quickly that people that offered him food as repayment were the real heroes here, and that sugar was the only thing that kept him focused through the exhaustion (he tried coffee once, but not only did he have to drink like five cups of the stuff for it to have any effect, but also the five cups hit him all at once and didn’t last long enough to be worth the twenty bucks). He also took some time to just focus on learning his way around.

He’d long since reasoned that the reason he suddenly had all of these abilities was that blasted mutated spider, and so he fully embraced his spider image and swiped some things from the chemistry and robotics labs on his last days of school, which he used to formulate ‘spider webs’. Testing the webs turned out pretty catastrophic at first, but he got the hang of them and the dispensers eventually. He had to brace the things on his wrists properly or else the things would snap off with the force of his body swinging, or break his wrist, which had happened once or twice. He got the hang of them rather quickly, though, and he enjoyed swinging around even when he wasn’t actively looking for crime to stop. He took a tour of the city this way, swinging, making an actual web to lay in on the Queensboro Bridge just to be a troll, then doing it again when the rain invariably melted his webs.

He was having fun being Spider-Man, if he was honest. 

More than once, Christine came home late at night and caught him sneaking into the bathroom, or coming out of the shower suspiciously late. He always tried to shrug it off as nightmares or being up too late reading or doing something Star Wars related. He knew she knew better, and he felt awful lying to her, but he couldn’t risk her banning him from being Spider-Man. He couldn’t afford it when he was just starting to look into his family’s deaths.

He paid special attention to corner store robberies—his aunt and uncle very clearly hadn’t been these robbers’ first victims. They killed too easily for that. He also paid special attention to things he heard as Peter Parker—people selling or giving out stolen cigarettes or lottery tickets, or people talking about where to buy them. He had to admit it felt kind of awesome staking out these shady individuals. He felt like a detective on Law and Order. He listened a lot, and he waited. Every once in a while, he crossed paths with someone else who stood on rooftops to listen, like he did. Once, he stopped a robbery that turned out to be something much more complicated, and he’d cleaned it up pretty quickly and brutally, although Peter was happy to see that the man didn’t actually kill anybody. “Move it along, Spider-kid,” he’d said, not unkindly. “Thanks for your help, but this is way out of your league. Don’t get dragged into this.” He’d seen the guy one other time, but after that, he mostly figured out his own beat and stayed away from any real trouble.

He caught wind of the robbers that attempted to rob Mr. Delmar’s trying to rob another store—a competitor of Delmar’s but still. Queens was his home and these were his streets. Even Salvatore’s didn’t deserve to be robbed. When he got there, the robbers cracked jokes. Peter joked with them, while webbing them to the door and waiting with his arms crossed and his foot tapping for the police showed up. He thwipped away just as the signature red and blue flashing lights signified the arrival of the NYPD, skipping over a couple of roofs and then swinging across the street to watch the aftermath.

Yes, he definitely loved being Spider-Man.

He still hadn’t found the men that killed his family, though. He tried not to let it grate on his nerves, but each new crime he stopped, he checked, tried to remember anything about them that could be similar. Sometimes, he even asked questions. It was all fruitless, though, and slowly, his elation at his newfound powers gave way to jaded determination. By the time summer was ending, Spider-Man was still the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man™ albeit less friendly and more mission-oriented.

He should have been able to find them… why couldn’t he? He should have been able to catch them. He should have because he was Spider-Man.

It turned out, being Spider-Man meant he was still only a man, a teenaged one at that.

He didn’t want to give up though. He decided to focus instead on helping out his community. He threw himself into the little things, rescuing pedestrians and helping lost people. He let the people get to know Spider-Man, and eventually, he found himself being happy again.

He could do this. He could stop people from getting hurt just as he was. For the moment, he didn’t need anything else.

* * *

It was like an episode of Smallville, and the fact that Tony thought that made him feel really old. Tony had looked into the kid a lot. He had FRIDAY track him through his YouTube appearances, and she extrapolated all the landmarks she saw determined that any time the so-called Spider-Man travelled somewhere, he came from somewhere in Queens, probably. So, whoever this person was, he or she probably didn’t come from somewhere fancy (no offense, Jesus. He just knew that Queens was full of working-class communities and whoever this was came from that environment). 

Alas, the red-blue blur materialized into a person, and said person threw himself (or herself, who knew) in front of the car and stopped it with his hands. He went to the side of the car and seemed to be asking if everyone was alright, and then he hopped on top of it to peer into the bus the car had almost crashed into. Satisfied that everyone was relatively unarmed, he zipped off, swinging out of view of the camera in another red-blue blur.

The next video was sweet. The blur emerged, this time, not as a blur at all, but as a person, rapidly climbing the side of a building and making his way across to one of the window ledges, where there was a cat mewling loudly, probably asking for help. How it got there was a mystery, but the person simply sat down next to the cat and put it in his lap, petting it for a moment to soothe it before pulling themselves up onto the roof and disappearing from view.

That video wasn’t all. There were montages of the spiderman stopping police chases and saving wayward pedestrians from getting slaughtered on the street by irritated, insane taxi drivers, and even waving and yelling some spider-related wisecrack as he swung off into the distance, whooping in joy as he swung and leaving the person recording with a note webbed to his hand:

_ You’re welcome! -Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man _

The note’s handwriting was worryingly juvenile. 

After that, he had FRIDAY review all the videos of him she could find, even going as far as hacking security footage and city camera footage. He finds out more about the (kid?)’s abilities then—increased strength and super-human agility, almost to the point where the person had to be anticipating things no one on earth could predict. They did fight clumsily, also as if on instinct. They relied too much on their strange prediction sense and insane strength, which told Tony he was young, in need of training. 

More video showed a fraction of a second’s worth of a device on each of their wrists. Frame-by frame analysis showed that they shoot fluid from them that became a rope strong enough to handle incredible stress. 

FIRDAY finally came back with her results on where this web-slinger came from, and she figured based on the landmarks that were visible on the YouTube videos that any time the so-called Spider-Man travelled somewhere, he came from two locations—some apartment in Queens near the bridge and somewhere in the vicinity of... a high school?! 

Which meant that, unless the person was some sort of chemist, the only place someone could get the materials to build something like that was in a school, particularly one for promising STEM academics like the one FRIDAY pointed out. So yes, the kid was a high-schooler. A genius, probably, but a still a high-schooler.

Tony face-palmed. 

After that, it didn’t take long to find out who he was: Peter Parker. Parents deceased, bodies never found. Adoptive parents also deceased, killed in a convenience store robbery. He was only 14 years old and he was twice-orphaned and acquired super powers? It was that fact that possessed him to go on with recruiting the Spider-Man. Anyone else would have become selfish, tried to make themselves rich or used their abilities to hurt other people. Not this kid. This kid climbed trees to rescue cats and stopped car accidents with his bare hands, and stood between robbers’ guns and innocent people.

* * *

Seeking out his legal guardian only made his story more heartbreaking. Christine was young—beautiful and smart too, just the kind he would normally go for if he wasn’t dealing with all of this—but she was obviously sad and exhausted. 

He decided to sit down with her and listen. “He’s a good boy,” she whispered. “He’s just... I wasn’t ready to deal with a teenager, you know? Especially a genius one like him. He’s... he’s grieving. He’s always been grieving. I don’t know how to help him. And—now he sneaks out all the time, and...” She sighs, swiping under her eyes with her fingers. “I’m sorry. I realize that this probably doesn’t make things better.” 

“No, I get it,” Tony answered, and he really did. “He probably needs more stimuli. Smart kids like him that have emotional baggage, they best way to keep them from derailing is to keep them busy. Trust me, I would know.”

Peter wandered in at that moment and Tony saw how his face morphed from shock, to confusion, to thunderstruck, and then pure elation. 

Tony figured he’d better shut down the whole hero-worship routine, though he found it particularly adorable. Instead, he prodded the teen into a private conversation.

Inside his room, upon the revelation that Tony knows that he is Spider... “Spider-ling, crime-fighting spider— uh, spider-boy?—”

“It’s Spider-Man.”

Tony didn’t have to try hard to suppress his amusement because the boy’s face and shoulders fell, and he saw for himself the sadness that Christine was talking about. He wondered if he’d get a rise out of him and maybe get him to laugh.

“Not with that onesie you’re not.”

Peter actually glared. “It’s not a onesie. I can’t believe this? I was actually have a really good day today, you know, Mr. Stark? I didn’t miss my train. This perfectly good DVD player was just sitting there... that algebra test? Nailed it.” Somehow the kid sounded like he was having a bad day now that Tony had shown up. Tony was equally amused and stung by that—people normally had the opposite reaction to him. Still, even though his mood had obviously fallen, the kid had sass and spunk.

What else did the kid have? It was time to see for himself. First he had to find out if Peter had help. “Who else knows? Anybody?” 

“No,” he said and he sounded as lonely as he looked. “Nobody.”

“Not even your unusually attractive aunt?”

Peter’s head popped up and he made eye contact—anxiety but defiance. Shoulders tight—defensiveness. The aunt is a sensitive topic.

“No,” he said, first rejecting the idea that Tony found his aunt attractive. His entire body went rigid. “No, no, no. She’s off limits. You can’t date her and she can’t know what I can do.”

Tony was amused. “Oh?”

“Christine is one of the best trauma surgeons in New York. She’s not stupid. I know she knows I sneak out, but she can’t find out for what. It’ll kill her.”

“Why?”

“Because... I’m all she has by way of family now. Aunt May...” his voice borke a little over her name, and his posture slumped. He turned to his ancient computer, fiddling with something. He picked up his screwdriver and starts tinkering as he talked. Tony saw that it visibly calmed him, and he related to that a lot. “Christine can’t know. And you—she has enough on her plate, okay? She’ll try to stop me and she won’t be able to, because I can’t quit so just please just... leave her alone.”

Tony changed topics because now the kid was obviously stressed about this and there was something incredibly painful in his chest about that. “You know what I think is really cool? This webbing.” He threw the vial of it while the kid was staring at his DVD player, but he snatched it out of the air without even looking and threw it back into the closet. “Who manufactured it?” Tony asked.

“I did.”

Tony was impressed. The kid knew way more about chemistry and physics than he lead even others at his school to believe. Christine did say he was a genius but... inventing his own webs and shooters at only 14? Even if he wasn’t some sort of spider-baby, Tony would look into funding this kid’s science, maybe even bring him into Stark Industries. He needed minds like that. “Climbing the walls? How are you doing that? Adhesive gloves? Some sort of—”

“It’s a long story.”

Tony sat and stared at him. “I have time,” he answered quietly. When Peter doesn’t speak, he said, “you know the story of how I became Iron Man, right?”

“Sure. There was an attack in Afghanistan. People kidnapped you to try to make you build them more weapons, I guess? You made your first suit instead.”

“I was kidnapped by terrorists at the behest of my former CEO, Obadiah Stane. One of my father’s closest friends. He was selling my weapons to terrorists and black-market dealers under the table.”

“That’s why you shut down your weapons division. I knew it.” 

“Right. My father’s entire legacy. He died in a car crash when I was 17.”

Peter’s shoulders slumped. “I know. I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I know how this goes, kid. I’m sorry, too.”

Peter slumped onto his bed. “My parents, Aunt May and Uncle Ben... Stephen...”

“Who’s that?”

“Christine’s... ex-boyfriend, I guess. He was a neurosurgeon. We hung out a lot, he knows a lot too, like me. He helped me understand things. But... well, he had a car accident too. He shattered both hands. And now he’s gone somewhere, we don’t know where. He is never coming back. Why would he? He can’t do what he was born for anymore, and we just… we don’t matter enough to replace what he lost.”

Another parental figure ripped away from this kid by tragedy. What was the count now? Five? Jesus, next thing he was going to say was “it’s a hard knock life” and break into song.

He changed topics again, studying the makeshift suit in his hands and coming across... “Lordy! What even is this? Can you even see in these?! WooeeeehhhhI’mbliiiiinndddd!”

“Yes,” Peter defends, snatching the suit away. “Yes I can!” But he got a short chuckle out of the kid, and that was progress. “It’s just that when whatever happened happened, it’s like my senses are dialed up to 11. It’s too much input. They help me focus.”

“Do you get sensory overloads?”

“Sometimes.” 

Tony would have to add some dampening tech to his suit. The AI could help him focus too, keep directing him to priority targets. He’d have to modify the HUD too. “You’re in dire need of an upgrade—systemic, top to bottom, 100-point restoration. That’s why I’m here.”

To his credit, the kid didn’t get excited tight away. He was surprised, but he didn’t geek out. 

“Why are you doing this?” he asks. I gotta know your MO. What gets you out of that twin bed in the morning?” _ He needs a new mattress. _

Peter met his eyes again. His gaze was always intense, honest, and deep. In this moment, he wasn’t a high-school-aged genius kid with super powers. He was a man in a child’s body. “Because— i’ve been me my whole life. And I’ve had these powers for three months. I... read books. I build computers. And yeah, I would love to play football. But I couldn’t then. So I shouldn’t now.”

“Sure. Because you’re different.”

“Exactly. But I can’t tell anybody, so I’m not. When you can do the things that I can, but you don’t... and then then the bad things happen...”

Bad things. His neurosurgery mentor, his parents, his entire family. They were all just bad things that happened, now. Desolation crowded Tony’s throat, but then it got worse.

“...they happen because of you.”

Tony wanted to tell him that he’s in this mess because they tried—the Avengers really did try, he swears it—but the bad things happened anyway.

He didn’t.


	13. thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christine's thoughts when Tony shows up, and the battle in the airport in Germany makes Tony want to puke.

“C’mon Christine! Please?”

Christine was tired. She had just come home from a too-long surgery only to find Tony Stark of all people waiting around in front of her door, shades on, hair carefully disarrayed, semi-casual suit/tee-shirt/sneakers worth more than her yearly salary, asking if Peter Parker was home.

Completely unprepared for this, she’d invited him in. He asked her about Peter and… he didn’t seem uncaring. Still, she was leery of letting Peter know about this. After  _ him,  _ she wasn’t sure another super-talented famous guy mentoring him would be good for him, especially not this larger-than-life, half-out-the-door hero with more money than actual God.

Sensing he’d have to convince her about this, He sat down facing her and simply listened. God, he seemed more attentive and responsible in person… and sad. There was something crushing this man, and whatever it was, he had decided that coming here to recruit Peter to… whatever it was… was the solution.

Of course, when Peter came home, the sheer awe and elation that  _ Tony Stark _ was in his house was equally comical and depressing—comical because Peter expressed himself with his entire body when he was excited, and depressing because she was afraid this would crush him if it went wrong.

“Aunty Christine! I’m home, are you here? There was this crazy car outsi— _ what?  _ I—hey? Hi, I-I’m… P-Peter.” He stumbled adorably through his introduction, and Stark seemed amused.

“Tony,” he said simply.

“W-what are you doing here?” Peter breathed.

“It was about time we met. You got my emails, right?”

Peter’s eyebrows crinkled together, and Christine thought she saw Stark wink. “Y-yeah? Yeah, about the...”

Christine felt her hackles rise. “You didn’t tell me about the grant.”

“The grant,” Peter repeated, dazed.

“Yeah, the September Foundation.”

“Right.”

“Yeah. Remember when you applied?”

Christine  _ knows  _ about the September Foundation grants. They were all over the news for a while. Tony Stark, of course, founded it and then funded pretty much all of the ongoing research at MIT with it. It was a grant that allowed the best STEM students in the country to change the world. Peter was certainly such a student, but he was still 14—his sophomore year of high school was going to begin shortly after his fifteenth birthday. How had he applied without help? Remembering that to even get into his current high school, Stephen had written him recommendations and donated more money than she wanted to think about to the school, she wondered who had what foot in what door to get Tony Stark to show up at their condo in Queens and how she never found out about it.

“Well, I approved, so now we’re in business.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You just  _ applied  _ for a collegiate research grant and won it? What for? What are you researching?”

Tony answered smoothly, “It’s a project that Stark Industries is looking into actually pretty seriously. There’s a lot of use for engineering and medical applications. I was so impressed when I saw it, that I ended up trying to play with it a little. There’s very little that gets me in the lab like this. I figured I should see the genius mind for myself.”

“You… you didn’t tell me anything. What’s up with that? Peter, is everything alright with you?”

Peter walked over to her and held her tightly, kissing her cheek. “Everything is going to be alright now, Aunty Christine. Okay?”

She nodded, and Tony followed Peter into his room, where they shut the door. She didn’t hear the conversation, but when they came out, Peter was practically vibrating with excitement again. “AUNTY CHRISTINE YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT! I am invited to a retreat! It’s a Stark Industries thing, where we’ll learn about business and see cool tech and—please, Aunty, can I go?”

“What? Where is this retreat, exactly?”

“Upstate,” Tony answered. “Starts tomorrow.”

Peter’s eyes widened, and his face fell. His mouth pulled into a pout, complete with a jutted-out lower lip. “Fine,” she sighed. Something about this was extremely off, but Peter hadn’t looked so excited about something in so long that she couldn’t say no.

Peter whooped in joy, his pout giving way to sparkling excitement and he leapt into her arms again. “Thank you, Aunty! Thank you thank you thank you! This is gonna be great!”

Christine smiled and kissed his head. “I love you, Peter,” she said. “You’d better call me, okay? Every night.” 

“I will!”

“Okay, then, kiddo. I’m guessing Mr. Stark is going to wait for you to pack a bag.”

Peter looked up at Tony with so much hope in his eyes that the man staggered back a little bit. “Of course,” he said.

Peter scrambled into his room, leaving Stark to stare after him in wonder.

“What an amazing kid,” he said to himself. Christine wholeheartedly agreed.  
  


* * *

The plane ride was when he really got to see the depth of Peter’s scientific mind. He asked a billion questions about Iron Man’s suit, the propulsion system, even met FRIDAY and asked her endless questions. He explained the formula of his web fluid to Tony in detail, and Tony suggested a few modifications. They even tinkered together.

He’d known this kid for about 5 hours and he was already attached to him.

He even answered the kid’s super-invasive questions. 

“You... told me what happened with the Avengers, and also in Vienna and stuff, but you never told me about you and Captain America.”

Tony shrugged, made a face. “Cap and I disagreed on the Accords.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

“The guy who blew up the Accords in Vienna, the guy who perpetrated the attacks in Bucharest—that guy is someone Rogers knows. From back in his Army days. They went in together but HYDRA got him, turned him into some sort of terrorist assassin type. We were seeing each other on and off. I had… asked him for something more serious. He was happy with that, too, until he found out that his fuck buddy was alive on ice somewhere.”

“He left you for his friend.”

“Yep. Apparently, they always loved each other but back then... well, you know. So now, the only person I’ve ever wanted to be with more than once is in love with someone else I didn’t even know existed until I found out he was also a killer, and Steve is using the Accords as an excuse to choose him over the team, too. I...” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m trying to clean this up before he makes it worse—I even told him I’d get Bucky into a psych center in the States—he’d do time, but he’d get help. I would have done that for him, because I… he... I am trying so hard to get him to come home. But he... he thinks he’s right doing this, but he’s wrong. That makes him my responsibility. And that makes him... that makes him dangerous. And now I have to bring him in.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“I want to help you, Mr. Stark. You can trust me.” Peter placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I know there’s a lot I don’t know about the Avengers, or even about you. But I know you’re trying to save them from something worse. I’m sorry you feel like he turned them on you. Those of us here—we’re not going to do that, okay?”

“Alright, kid.”

When they arrived in Berlin, he felt like he already knew that Rogers wasn’t going to turn in his boyfriend. Tony still tried. He threatened, pleaded, bargained. But still, Steve met his eyes and he saw nothing but cold.

The fight was bitter and angry, and Tony was getting a little bit desperate, especially when he realized that Steve had gotten his boyfriend onto the quinjet after Steve’s friend the giant almost killed him, distracting them all while Steve and Bucky made their eacape.

“KID! Talk to me! Talk to me!” He scrambled over to where the kid was laying on his side, completely still and his limbs splayed around. He held his breath until he finally saw the minor movement of Peter’s expanding ribs as he took a wheezing breath.

Peter had groaned. “I’m alright,” he whispered.

“No you’re not. You’re done! Okay? You’re done.”

“I’m not done,” he protested, but Tony pulled the Christine card. Peter laid on his back and tried to catch his breath. They both froze when they heard the roar of the quinjet taking off.

Tony and Rhodey followed, but Peter climbed to his feet and webbed on to the guy with the awesome carbon-fiber wings, who was following. He climbed as high as he could, hanging on for dear life.

The next few moments were a bit of blur for Tony. He and Rhodey were gaining on the jet when they felt Sam behind them. Vision used the Mind stone to try to take out one of Sam’s wings, but Rhodey’s suit took the direct hit.

Panic flooded Tony’s vision, his hearing. That’s why he didn’t see the streak of red that entangled itself with Rhodey’s limp suit, didn’t hear the scream, “MR. STARK, GO UP! GO UP PLEASE...” It wasn’t until he felt his flight systems grind to a halt and FRIDAY took over his suit in order to stabilize them that he realized Peter was holding on to Rhodey’s wrist on one side and a web attached to his suit on the other. “Up. UpuPUP FRIDAY GO UP!” he screamed.

FRIDAY managed to pull up right before Peter lost his grip. Thankfully, Sam was there to bring Rhodey to safety. FRIDAY’s change in direction had slowed their fall significantly. Peter fell the remaining thirty or so feet and all Tony heard was the grunted huff as the breath punched out of Peter’s lungs and then nothing else.

“NO!”

“Oh,  _ shit!—”  _ Rhodey’s voice on the comm was strained, the sudden fear of what just happened strangling it.

Tony was shaking. “FRIDAY, tell me something good,” he pleaded as he landed next to Peter and yanked his mask off, frantically tying to check him over. “Please breathe, please breathe, please breathe…”

“Boss, his suit reads a pulse. It seems he has a concussion and contusions to his ribs and some organs. His right leg has multiple fractures.”

“Oh God,” he whispered. “Okay. C’mon kid, wake up. Wake up. Is he in shock?”

“No. Some of his less severe injuries appear to be healing. Give him a moment, Boss.”

Rhodey released from his suit and ran over to them, Sam close behind. The both stared in complete shock and horror when they realized the person that saved Rhodey’s life was a child.

“JESUS CHRIST!”

Sam sunk to his knees. “Oh... God...” He began to shake all over. “Oh my God… what did I do? It’s just—he’s just a kid? Oh God…”

“Tony, that’s a  _ kid _ ! Are you insane?!”

“Is he alive? He’s just a kid. Oh, my God...”

“I’m not sure, wing-guy,” Peter whispered. “I think I’m a grass pancake.”

“I’m going to throw you off something tall myself,” Tony whispered. “I told you you were done!”

“Couldn’t let him hurt you,” Peter wheezed. “Mr. Rhodey—is he okay?!”

“I’m fine, kid.”

“I can’t move my leg,” Peter mumbled. “It hurts. I broke it. I can’t move it.”

“Easy, kid.” Rhodey finally snapped out of it and knelt down to help with first aid.

“I’m getting you home, okay?” Tony whispered.

“Okay. Is Col. Rhodes…”

“I’m fine, kid. Eyes on me, okay? See? I’m good.”

Peter had a very distinct sort of gaze when he was about to say something important. Rhodey met his gaze evenly for a moment before he said, “Sam, find me something hard I can use for a splint. Tony, keep him talking.”

Peter told him, “Mr. Colonel Rhodes sir?”

Rhodey had to let out a laugh. “Just Rhodey, okay?”

“If we’d caught them but you died, we wouldn’t have won at all. Please be careful, okay? You’re Mr. Stark’s best friend.”

Rhodey didn’t know what to say, so he focused on stabilizing his head and neck instead.

Sam scrapped the War Machine suit and returned with two pieces of metal. Rhodey was about to shred his shirt to tie the splint with, but Peter shakes his head. “The webbing will hold for two hours. It should be long enough to get me on the plane.”

“The plane?! I’m getting you to a hospital!” Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“No hospitals,” Peter yelped, bolting upright. He wheezed as the pain caught up with the action, but he still pleaded frantically, “Mr. Stark, you can’t take me to a hospital. I’ll be better than all of you by the time we land.”

“... are you serious?”

“Kinda,” he muttered. “It’s an exaggeration probably. Please, Mr. Stark. You can’t worry Aunty Christine. All I need is an extra couple of days.”

“Kid, you leg is broken more ways than I can count.”

“I know, but—“ he decided that demonstrating would be better than explaining. he pressed his palm on the edge of the metal splinting his leg and yanked. Blood pooled in his palm and all three of them yelled. 

“What the fuck!?”

“Holy shit! Shit! What are you doing?!”

“Kid what the hell—” but then, just like that, Peter shook his hand off in the grass and revealed an inch-long, dark pink line. It was still very obviously a cut, the split flesh still raw and angry, but it pulled itself together and stopped bleeding in less than a minute.

“I think I’m going to puke,” Sam muttered.

Rhodey looked at his hand for a long moment and then said, “well wrap your leg up, kid. You might be able to do weird magic healing shit but you still need an x-ray. We can take him back to the compound.”

Tony just nodded mutely. He was sure he’d probably puke, too.


	14. fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony had his heart truly broken. but he built a new one. this one can survive everything including the apocalypse, but not the care and concern of one Peter Parker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning:
> 
> 1.rated M for explicit description of murder, heavy angst, awkward post break-up bullshit. Reader discretion is advised.
> 
> 2\. Steve Rogers is full of shit. That said, this is NOT going to be a Captain America hate fic. We don't hate captain America in this house, okay? It's just that after the fuckery that is about to ensue, he's going to have to work very hard to prove to us that he's not a complete dips hit, that's all. He'll succeed. Eventually.

Tony gritted his teeth and looked. He stiffened his spine and listened.

The image was grainy since tt was filmed so long before, but he could still clearly see, and hear. He could see his father tumble out of his destroyed car—his foot seemed stuck for a moment, so he landed on his face in the dirt—and he saw the glaring white of a single headlamp from a motorcycle. It was very clear to him in that moment that the motorcyclist was the one that caused the car to crash. He saw the rider get off, casually pop the trunk, stroll over to the driver’s side, where his father was wheezing on the floor. He wheezed out a plea for help, his broken voice desperate. 

Tony’s heart and stomach lurched at the same time, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.

His father gave in to the hand that reached for him, probably hoping that it was reaching out to save him. He still had hope in his voice when his face in the grainy image lit up in recognition. “Sergeant Barnes?” he whispered.

Howard had hoped for recognition in his friend’s eyes, but all he saw was cold. It was the last thing he saw.

ON December 16th, 1991, Sergeant Barnes bashed Howard Stark’s face in with his metal fist—once, twice. His hand came away red and slick with blood, so bloody that Tony could see it even in the dark, even in the grainy, low-quality video. Tony’s eyes welled as he recognized the glazed look of death on his father’s face for the split second before Barnes bodily hoisted him into the air and pushed him into his seat again, laying his head on the steering wheel.

He blinked back the tears and steeled his nerves. There he was, the man Steve was in love with, the one he left Tony for, slowly making his way around to the back of the car, and then the passenger’s side. He reached down with his human arm.

Tony forced himself to watch. His mother’s desperate cries for her husband were cut off quickly and replaced with wheezes and choked gurgles. He bit his lip until he tasted blood and his mother was silent.

Then, he did the only thing he could. He launched himself at Steve’s boyfriend. Rage and hatred and something much more caustic, much more painful, made him move before he could even think, before he could blink away the horrible images, or his tears, or the awful burning that accompanied them.

Unsurprisingly, it was Steve that placed one hand on his arm, the other on his chest, restraining him. 

Tony pulled away from him, his skin crawling even though Steve couldn’t physically touch him through his suit. He looked down at where Steve’s hand had been on his arm, and then up to meet those warm, blue eyes. In that moment, he wanted to claw them out. “Did you know?”

Steve’s eyes told him all he needed to know, but his stupid mouth still said, “I didn’t know it was him.”

“Don’t fucking bullshit me, Rogers,” he hissed. “_Did. You. Know?”_

Steve whispered, “yes.”

Suddenly, every kiss they ever shared, every fight that ended in them breathless and naked, every word Steve ever spoke to him were causing a feedback loop with his nauseated stomach, growing louder and louder and making his whole body shake violently as he resisted the urge to throw up right in Steve’s stupid face.

_Betrayal. _That was tha caustic, ugly feeling that was eating away at his insides, worse than the hurt and the anger and the hatred that were making him lose his sanity very, very quickly. He didn’t think. He swung his arm. The back of his gauntlet caught Steve across the cheek, sending him flying.

Barnes _defended _him. It made Tony’s blood boil because not two minutes before, Barnes lowered his gun and waited for Tony to hurt him, looking for all the world so ashamed, he wanted to vomit too. In that moment, Tony could confess that he was fully intending to kill him.

“This isn’t going to change what happened,” Steve pleaded.

“I don’t care,” Tony hissed. “He killed my mom.”

The two enhanced men fought him, tried to ruin him, brought him to the ground and drove their fists and their weapons into his suit over and over until he was wheezing in pain.

It was fitting that it was Bucky Barnes that tried to rip his heart out, but that it was Steve Rogers who split it in half before picking up his beaten, bruised lover and stumbling away.

“That shield doesn’t belong to you,” Tony wheezed. “You don’t deserve it! My father made that shield.”

Steve left the shield and Tony in the dust.  
  


* * *

Tony wheezed. His vision swam. His suit that had always been his armor was now keeping him from standing up, from getting help. He knew he was going to die. He was going to die because Steve killed him. The words that Yinsen said to him about wasting his life made his eyes burn as they echoed and echoed in his fading mind, along with the gasping, heartwrenching sounds of his parents’ demise.

He tried. He really did try. He hadn’t wanted to waste his life. He hadn’t wanted to waste his life. He wanted to use it, change it. 

He fell in love instead.

He closed his eyes. 

When he opened them, Rhodey was the one looking at him in concern. “W-where… where am I?”

“FRIDAY pinged me, said you were in distress. She put me in your Mark XLIII, I hope you don’t mind. I… we found you in Siberia? The other super soldiers were all dead and you were—you were fucked up. What happened out there?”

“C-cap was right,” he whispered. “He wasn’t wrong. There were more of… of _him._ But Zemo wanted to find them. He killed them.”

“Why? Who is Zemo?”

“He did all of this—he did it all to destroy the Avengers. He pretended to be Barnes to kill King T’Chaka and… he showed me something.”

“What?” Rhodey asked quietly. 

“A video. How my parents really died. Rhodey, he—Steve left me for him. The assassin that beat my father’s face in and strangled my mother to death, he’s the one that Steve wanted to save.”

Rhodey sucked in a breath. “Jesus.”

“He tried to kill me. For him.”

What could anyone say to something like that? What could Rhodey do except sit helplessly and watch his best friend’s heart break live and in real time? He leaned over and wrapped his arms around him. “I’m sorry” didn’t seem like it would cut it, so he said nothing.

It took almost a month for Tony to recover. 

Rhodey called him daily with updates; the Rogues had been taken and imprisoned in the Raft; the Accords were being rewritten and they’d push for signatures from the remaining Avengers within six months; Prince T’Challa’s coronation was happening soon, now that their traditional mourning period was ending; Captain America and the Winter Soldier were still off the grid. The rumor mill put them in Wakanda but nobody could confirm.

By the time he was up and working again, he was glad. He’d spent three weeks in the medbay, confined to his bed while his ribs healed—Cap had broken in his already-less-than-optimal sternum with the blow from his shield, bruising his lungs and airway and almost caving in his heart—in fact, if not for the Iron Man suit, Cap would have probably cut him in half. Six ribs had hairline fractures, six more severely bruised; it would take him several months to recover enough to be in the suit full time again. He threw himself instead into damage control for the Avengers. He dealt with Ross’s annoying ass, he went with Rhodey to all the Convention meetings and negotiated and renegotiated the Accords. He didn’t sleep listing all of the issues Cap and his Rogues had brought up in defense of why they wouldn’t sign, and he made sure to argue those points until they were a dead horse beaten into mincemeat.

He did all of this for one reason—distraction. When he wasn’t doing that, he was working on his new suits or upgrading the suit for his new little friend, Spider-Man, who, upon finding out that Tony had been injured waited around outside the tower for several days, asking to speak to Mr. Stark.

Finally, FRIDAY overrode her order and took him to the penthouse lab, where Tony was sitting at his desk running equations to up repulsor power in one of his suits. “Uh—Parker?”

“Oh my God! Mr. Stark! Mr. Happy let it slip accidentally that you were really hurt! I was really scared and I kept wanting to talk to you but nobody would let me—”

“Slow down, kid.” Tony felt himself breathe right for the first time in a long time. He ignored that feeling. He was determined to ignore that feeling if he ever felt it again, for anyone. Even Peter.

“S-sorry. I guess you’re busy. I should probably go? I’m sorry. I don’t want to bother you, I just… needed to see for myself that you were okay. I couldn’t sleep. All my nightmares were coming back and I guess… well, I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, Mr. Stark.”

His mind helpfully supplied, _and then the bad things happen… _

Jesus.

Chestaches weren’t new these days, but the way this boy melted his heart made his nerves zing to the tips of his fingers. Tony sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “Thanks for checking up on me, kid.”

“Any time, Mr. Stark!” the kid chirped happily.

“You’re a good kid,” he said sincerely. “Promise me you’ll listen to Happy, okay? Don’t drive him nuts.”

“I won’t, I promise!”

“And stay out of trouble.”

“Doing my best,” Peter nodded.

“How’s the suit working out?”

“It’s perfect! I love it!” His eyes were so bright, the brown of them so vivid, like the color of wood in the forest on a perfect day, right down to the flecks of golden sunlight. “Christine still doesn’t know about it,” he said, and his face fell. “It’s hard not to tell her. Sometimes she gets mad that I sneak out, but I can’t stop, you know? I just can’t, not when there’s so much to do. But… she gets so angry sometimes.”

“She loves you, kid.” He sighed. 

Peter was thoughtfully silent. “I’m all she has left,” he finally whispered. “I wish I could talk to her about it all,” he whispered.

Tony shrugged. “Well, you can talk to me—Happy. Us. You know? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you either, Peter.”

Peter swallowed hard, then nodded.

“Alright. This is done, and I have to move on to boring diplomacy stuff. FRIDAY can see you out. Hey—Happy reports to me every day about you. If you ever need to tell me anything, if you ever need my help, Happy will tell me. If you’re ever in danger, I’ll come for you. Okay?”

Peter swallowed, his eyes suddenly bright with tears. “Okay,” he said. Then he left, and Tony tried to focus on his paperwork for the Accords. 

He couldn’t, but at least the kid had helped him achieve what weeks of working himself into the ground had not; he was hopelessly distracted.  
  


* * *

The Rogues escaped from prison with the help of Captain America.

That was what Ross had been calling to tell him for four days in a row, but Tony was honestly tired of him and kept leaving him on hold eternally, much to the complete offense and consternation of the official in question.

He tuned out the berating he got when he finally bothered to answer and simply said, “you can either arrest them again or let me get them to sign the damn agreement.”

“Like you did last time?”

“Well, now they know what will happen if they don’t sign it. They’ll be more willing to listen this time around, I’m sure.”

“You’re a piece of fucking work, Stark!”

“So are you, Ross,” Tony answered agreeably. Then he hung up on the man.

Three days later, all of the Rogues were sat down in the conference room on the 88th floor, overlooking all of New York City. Steve sat at the end of the farthest from him, his eyes stubbornly focused on the river view instead of on the person sitting at the other end.

Wanda Maximoff was sullenly picking her nails, and everyone else seemed exhausted or pissed. Before Tony even opened his mouth, he knew nothing was going to change. “Okay. FRIDAY, we’re clearly not going to get anything done like this right now. Show everyone to a room and let them order what they want for food. Clear my schedule for the rest of the day.” He sighed and turned to the window, standing there for a long moment. “Meeting’s over,” he clarified when nobody moved. “We’ll try again tomorrow when all of you have slept and have a better attitude.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am trying to help you not end up in jail again after Cap busted you out illegally. Rambo over there might have felt he did the right thing, but every government on Earth disagrees. So go get food. Sleep. Jerk off. Whatever you want. But we’ll meet in this room tomorrow morning at 9 and you’ll think about how much fun you had in summer camp at The Raft until then. Capiche?”

Clint’s chair scraped as he stood. Before he left, he asked, “why did you sign?”

“Why did you join this fight after declaring yourself retired?”

Clint fell into a thoughtful silence.

“Because you felt you were needed and wanted to do the right thing.” Tony closed his eyes. “This was necessary,” he whispered, “because you all were right. I built Ultron out of fear and without anyone’s vote, and it almost destroyed everything I care about—especially all of you. That was on me, and this is me trying to make it right. The world doesn’t trust us because we don’t trust them and we don’t trust each other. I am doing the best I can. Please, please help me. Be mature about this. Think about everything you’ve been through because the Avengers asked for forgiveness instead of permission but never received either. If we ever want to help this world again, those agreements are the only way.”

He walked out.

The next day, the Rogue Avengers, every last one of them (except for, notably, Bucky Barnes), sat in silence, reading the agreement in front of them. When they were done, it was the one called Scott Lang that looked up with tears in his eyes. “H-house arrest? I get to see my kid?”

Tony smiled at him and nodded. “I think you got dragged into something a little over your head. You’ll serve 24 months of house arrest. I arranged a place for you near where your daughter lives, with the help of some friends of yours. She’ll have normal custodial visits while you’re there. The FBI is in charge of your time there. They’ll give you more details, but you’re basically only allowed off the premises if it’s an emergency with yourself or the kid or if we need you. Once that’s up, you’ll do the remainder of your time as an Avenger.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to. Just sign the agreement.”

He picked up a pen and signed every tabbed page without hesitation. “Thank you, Mr. Stark,” he whispered.

Tony nodded.

He managed to convince at lease the one, but the rest were anxious about it, which he understood. He decided to give them time. After they all left, Steve was still hovering in the doorway. “I… are you alright?”

Tony snorted. “Sure. Thanks for asking.”

Steve sighed. “I… want to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“I… shouldn’t have… what I mean is, I had to save Bucky. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“But you did.”

“I wish I hadn’t had to.”

Tony shrugged. “Don’t worry, Stevie. I got the message loud and clear.”

Steve gulped. “I broke your suit.”

“I made a new one.”

“I… broke your heart… thing.” Steve drew an invisible circle over his own chest and then gestured at Tony’s.

“I made a new one of those, too,” Tony said quietly. “It’s a lot harder to break than the last one.”


	15. fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gives Peter a special, important gift.
> 
> We're taking the old steeb out with the trash but the soft stephy with the broken hands is back in town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN A HELLOVA WHILE
> 
> I mean, hey, hi. I'm bored, it's quarantine, I'm sorry if this is fillerish. Dunno what's going on with me lately but I'm working on stuff. In any case, welcome back. Thanks for being here. Love that.
> 
> Here is a depressed steeb and a hopeful steph, and a Tony doing dad things like taking a spider baby out for his birthday.

**CHAPTER 15**

_ Bucky’s smile was melancholic, lost. He studied the cryo chamber in front of him with a mixture of fear and relief in his expressive eyes. Being dragged into cryo or more electric shocks kicking and screaming was different than choosing this. He was going to take the cold and whatever else, but he would come out on the other side and he wouldn’t be a killer anymore. For once, he’d be gaining something from this. _

_ “Buck? Are you okay? I…” _

_ “It’s okay, Stevie, you know? I’m… I want this. I’m scared. But I want this.” _

_ “You don’t have to punish yourself with this—I… I trust you, Buck.” _

_ Bucky looked over at him and sighed. “I know, baby. But  _ I _ don’t trust me. And I have to fix that.” _

_ “Okay.” Steve swallowed, trying to tamp down on the terror that was pulling at him. “Are you sure about this?” _

_ “I can’t trust my own mind, so until they figure out how to get this stuff out of me, I think going under is the best thing. For everybody.” _

_ Steve’s eyelashes were wet. He didn’t think he’d cry, but he didn’t know why this felt so much like a goodbye. He just knew that he could feel his heart tearing apart— _

_ “Don’t,” Bucky whispered. “Don’t cry. I have to do this for me.” _

_ “What about me?” Steve wanted to ask, but he knew it was selfish. He wanted them to help deprogram Bucky as much as anyone, but did he have to lose him to the ice again? He couldn’t stop his mind from mixing this with the last time he saw Bucky, falling through air and ice into the nothingness below. _

_ Someone came and fitted Bucky’s remaining arm with and IV and several sensors. Someone else came and helped him onto the stretcher. “This will be completely painless,” she said gently. “We’re going to sedate you first, and then we’ll place you in the machine. Once we close it, it will take about 15 seconds for the cryogenization to take effect. When you wake up you’ll be good as new.” _

_ Steve shook. “I don’t wanna lose you,” he whispered. “Not again.” _

_ “When this is all over, maybe we can try,” Bucky whispers, “but Stevie, we can’t do this like this. One word could make me hurt you—kill you, like I killed  _ them _ . I already tried, remember?!” _

_ “That was different,” Steve argued. “That wasn’t you.” _

_ “And I want to get this not-me out of my head,” Bucky snapped, losing his patience. “I have always wanted the best for you, Stevie, always had your six, even when I fucking died I went down being sure you were gonna be okay. Can’t you let me do this one thing for me? Can’t I have my mind back?” _

_ Steve nodded, stepping back. He took a breath. “I… yes. I can do that. You’re right. I…” but there wasn’t anything left to say, really. Of course Bucky had to help himself. Steve couldn’t do that for him—couldn’t do anything for him except leave. So he said, “so long, Bucky. I’ll miss you.” _

_ Bucky gritted his teeth, and his eyes were wet, too. “I’m sorry, Stevie. I’ll see you on the other side, okay? I promise.” _

_ Steve watched from the corner as they sedated him, watched how his eyes rolled as they slipped closed. He watched them get the system ready, scientists and doctors calling out numbers and other information, rerouting the sedative and other medication through the cryo machine. Finally, they transferred him in, strapped him down. The machine closed around him, and Steve forced himself to watch as the view of his face was shrouded by ice. _

He was reliving that moment now, in a never-ending loop of dispair as the sun finally started to set over New York City. It was the middle of the night where Bucky was, asleep in his bed of ice.

The day ended in disaster. Scott signed and went home. Clint did, too. Natasha signed it and left, and, in true Natasha style, vanished as soon as she hit the streets. Neither he nor Wanda signed the Accords. Sam, God bless him, followed Steve’s lead and refused to sign.

It was fair. Sam got dragged into this anyway, he didn’t ask to become a superhero. But then, nobody did. Well, except Tony. Tony was different, he was… 

Well, he was different. 

Steve pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to keep himself from crying. Tony had asked the rest of them to meet again tomorrow to discuss what needed to be changed before they’d sign. Even though Steve could see that he was constantly recoiling, sick at being in the room with them—with  _ him _ —he was still trying to get them to sign those blasted Accords. 

He couldn’t do that. He’d be signing away his soul and his right to use his abilities to save people. He firmly believed that, just as firmly as he knew that he was not going to be in that meeting in the morning.

He scrubbed the tears from his eyes, finished stuffing his things into his bag. He said goodbye in his mind to the tower, to the Avengers, to the connections he used to have, to Tony. He told himself that he wasn’t sorry, that he had to do what he thought was right.

But he was sorry, though, because he was cut off from what he knew, and it was like he was nosediving into the ice all over again. 

He still lifted his bag onto his shoulder and plunged.

* * *

Peter woke up on the roof again. It was a regular thing in the summer, since he’s gotten used to this new part of him. It turned out that Christine loved air conditioning and Peter was almost allergic to it. The summer was the perfect time for him to bask in the heat, and he did, webbing himself a bed in his corner of the roof where nobody visited but city pigeons, three of which he’d named and became friends with.

The heat in New York was a strange sort of heat. It never seemed to die down. The sea seemed to carry it in through the harbors and the rivers during the day, washing the city in sticky humidity turned into a steamer by the summer sun. At night, though, the city itself seemed to give off the heat, the glass and cement and rivers protesting the treatment of the sun and returning their own fire.

Today, he was depressed. He just turned 15. And the one-year of his aunt and uncle’s deaths came and went. Police never found the people who killed them, and neither did he. He wondered if his birthday would forever be overshadowed by murder.

He watched the sun rise sullenly. School would start the following Monday. He was looking forward to hanging out with Ned. He would, later, but he honestly wanted some time alone today. He reinforced his little web hammock and sighed, looking up at the sky as it changed colors until suddenly,

“Hey kid. Wanna go for a swing? Flight? Whatever you call it?” and the loud roar of Iron Man’s repulsors.

“W-what?” He jerked so hard with the surprise that he fell out of his web hammock, hitting the ground with a thud. Rubbing his head, he sat up and saw that his helmet was drawn back, tussled hair and goatee on full display, framing brown eyes and a wide smile.

“I heard through the grapevine that it’s been a shitty couple of days. I’m here to, you know, whatever it is people do when they’re friends and their lives suck. Commiserate? No, that probably needs drinks and we’re a few years away from that.”

“Mr. Stark, sir, you’re—you didn’t have to come all this way for me.”

“Pizza and ice cream?”

“It’s 6:45 in the morning.”

“It’s 6:45 pm somewhere. If that logic applies to margaritas why can’t it apply to pizza and ice cream?”

Peter smiled. “Because I’m too young to drink?”

“That is admittedly the correct answer,” Tony said, blinking like he was surprised. “But we’re still going to go eat.”

Peter swallowed thickly. “N-no pizza or ice cream. Please?” he whispered.

“Sure. Waffles and ice cream then?”

Peter looked up at him, overwhelmed with sadness and happiness which were battling each other where his lungs were supposed to be. “Waffles and ice cream. And bacon.”

“Waffles and ice cream and bacon. Danny’s on 86 th street. Pick you up in a bit, you smell like city pidgeons and misery.”

Peter has to laugh. “You can’t eve—can you even smell city pidgeons through that suit?!” he called after him, but Iron Man was already flying off into the distance, probably toward the tower.

Christine was sitting at the kitchen counter eating when he walked into the kitchen in his pajamas. “Morning,” she said tiredly.

“Hey,” he answered.

He opened the refrigerator and found himself facing a chocolate cupcake with a single candle that was shaped like a 15. “Happy birthday, kiddo,” she said as he took out the cupcake and promptly tore into it. “We were supposed to light that and make a wish,” she teases.

He leans on christine’s shoulder, careful not to get crumbs on her scrubs. “Can I make a wish later? When Ned is here and Mr. Stark, too?”

She looked at him and nodded. “Whatever you want, kiddo.”

Tony picked him up after he was dressed, and soon they were headed to Danny’s Diner. The place was barely noticeable, looked like a hole in the wall. But Peter dug into the best waffle he’d ever tasted, topped with ice cream, sliced strawberries, and freshly made whipped cream, and he thought he was gonna cry. “Mr. Stark where do you find these places?” he moaned.

Tony laughed. “Danny’s has been around since I was a kid. My nanny lived around these parts and sometimes my parents would let her take me places. She always brought me here.”

“What was your nanny like?”

“She was great. She kept me in line. Me, a genius with an attitude. But she paid me attention so, I listened to her, tried not to give her any shit.” Tony smiled at the memories of her for a while before digging in to his own waffle. “She was warm. From the motherland too, you know? My dad met her in Sicily or something, she’s the one that taught me Italian. You know, besides my mom.”

Peter smiled too. “Aunt May was like that too.”

Tony swallowed his bite and his face dropped into a serious expression. “Speaking of Aunt May, I got something for you.” He reaches into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, which he’s wearing over a baseball tee with red collar and sleeves and some obscure band on it. He pushes over a tri-folded paper, which Peter reads before looking up with tears in his eyes. “Y-you…”

“Nobody deserves to have their family knocked off like that, kid. I did some thinking. With my resources—especially FRIDAY, and a guy I know, I wanted you to know that I did my own digging, hired a PI, all of that. He and a detective in Queens Homicide have been working your case for weeks. They have fresh leads again too, thanks to FRIDAY.”

Peter didn’t know what to do, so he just sobbed. “ _ Thank  _ you, Mr. Stark.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Tony said, patting his arm. “First, we’re gonna find ‘em.”

Peter nodded. “We’re going to find them,” he said, determined. “They’re going to jail.”

* * *

The battle had been exhausting, and he wasn’t of that opinion because he died so many times in that blasted time loop. He was tired because was bleeding, his hands were  ** _b u r n i n g_ ** , Kamar-Taj was in complete chaos, and his  _ hands were dying _ . Did he mention they were dying? He wished they’d just cut them both off in the beginning, before he’d dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into attempting to fix them. They were garbage, useless meat and bones and nerves on the ends of his arms that made him wish he'd flung himself off Mt. Everest when he had the chance. 

_Fuck_ his hands.

The pain was so debilitating that Wong had to portal them back to Kamar-Taj and directly to the infirmary because he couldn’t hold his hands up more than three seconds without wanting to black out.

He spent all summer recovering in Kamar-Taj, studying magic and making himself as capable as possible. At first, he had to use magic to turn pages and hold books, because his hands screamed at even the thought of doing it by hand. It took him a few weeks to be able to do basic things again, but he did. Being able to shave for the first time on his own again was painfully nostalgic.

The funeral for the Ancient one was a quiet affair on the Kamar-Taj grounds, as were the funerals for the other deceased masters. Mordo notably did not attend any of them, but Wong was visibly upset—especially about Daniel Drumm, the former master of the New York Sanctum. His hands shook a few times, and he excused himself to meditate and collect himself in private as soon as it was over. Not even bothering to walk back through the grounds of his room, he simply made a portal and vanished.

Stephen asked about it later, but Wong didn’t speak of it or Daniel again. He did ask that they keep his relic in the New York Sanctum. Stephen was confused why Wong would ask him, but agreed nonetheless. Wong set it in a glass display and every once in a while, he would stand near it and stare at it, sometimes asking if he could touch it.

“I—I’m—I don’t see why not. Why ask me?”

“It’s because you’re the sanctum’s Master, now.”

“Oh.” He had almost forgotten that.  _ Almost. _

The more he recovered, the more others asked him things—direction, help with magic, and even details of administrating the various sanctums and Kamar-Taj.

“Wong, why are they all asking me?” Stephen finally asked, one day, exasperated. 

Wong shrugged. “You have earned their trust, I suppose.” 

“I…”

“I think it is best that you return to the New York Sanctum and learn your duties there. I will help you, of course. But… the others view you as a leader and… well, I think that it is only a matter of time before you are making decisions for more than just New York.”

Stephen felt a little intimidated, but remembering the vow he made to the Ancient One, he just said, “I’m… here to serve.”

Wong smiled. “I know.” Then he snarked, “I’m not sure, Strange. I do not think humility suits you.”

Stephen just laughed. Wong helped him pack his things, and then a few weeks later, he was home again. It was strange. The house he had in the village that he ended up selling was a few blocks away. His favorite sandwich place is up the street, the subway nearby, a tea shop that Wong blessedly pointed out called Sullivan’s Tea and Spice around the corner that sells black tea just like The Ancient One used to make.

Wong also packed up Master Daniel’s room. Then he meditated alone, for days.

“I know that… it’s easier to just meditate until you can repress it, but whatever you’re going through, you can talk to me,” Stephen offered one day, after a long time of silence.

“Master Daniel… I respected him very much,” Wong said simply, turning to make tea.

“Oh, Wong…”

Wong shrugged. “It is our way of life. We defend the realms with our lives. He lived and died bravely and admirably. With honor.”

Stephen nodded. “It’s still painful. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Wong said.

Stephen never brought Master Daniel up again, but if there was a bronze plaque on the wall where his relic was displayed, and if maybe Wong saw it and shed a quiet tear, well, Stephen knew nothing about it.

He contacted his lawyer, who set up selling off a small part of what remained of his stock portfolio to set up a savings account and setting up the rest to regrow his investments. He realized he’d have to live underground now, since the order was mostly secret, but he and Wong still needed to eat. 

And then he waited. He wondered if he should contact Christine, but he was afraid to. After what he’d done to her and Peter, how could he? What would he possibly say? He just wanted to apologize, and then maybe he’d be out of their hair forever.

_ Or maybe you can have them back, _ his mind whispered.

He always tried to ignore that whisper of hope, but he couldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up next, homecoming I guess. I should warn you guys that if you're triggered by anxiety or abandonment issues these next couple of chapters are probably gonna be tough. come scream at me in the comments or on Tumblr @daisypoisonpen.
> 
> y'all rock!  
<3Daisy


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